Definition of "filter" []

• A porous material through which a liquid or gas is passed in order to separate the fluid from suspended particulate matter. (noun)
• A device containing such a material, especially one used to extract impurities from air or water. (noun)
• Any of various electric, electronic, acoustic, or optical devices used to reject signals, vibrations, or radiations of certain frequencies while allowing others to pass. (noun)
• A colored glass or other transparent material used to select the wavelengths of light allowed to reach a photosensitive material. (noun)
• Computer Science A program or routine that blocks access to data that meet a particular criterion: a Web filter that screens out vulgar sites. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "What you can put in the text box to filter is anything you would put after '$filter =' in a"
• "For example, a call to polymorphic_path ([@project, @filter, @issue]) with a nil filter now returns commit"
• "Plus there's a lot more things you'll want to filter other than just whats provided by the filter_* functions."