Threshing is the process of loosening the edible part of cereal grain (or other crop) from the scaly, inedible chaff that surrounds it. It is the step in grain preparation after harvesting and before winnowing, which separates the loosened chaff from the grain. Threshing does not remove the bran from the grain.

Threshing may be done by beating the grain using a flail on a threshing floor. Another traditional method of threshing is to make donkeys or oxen walk in circles on the grain on a hard surface. A modern version of this in some areas is to spread the grain on the surface of a country road so the grain may be threshed by the wheels of passing vehicles.

However, in developed areas it is now mostly done by machine, usually by a combine harvester, which harvests, threshes, and winnows the grain while it is still in the field.

The cereal may be stored in a threshing barn.

A Threshing Bee is a festival held in communities to commemorate this process. The event is often held over multiple days and includes flea markets, activity booths, hog wrestling and dances. It is done by a machine called "combine" which is both a harvester and a thresher.

Verb

thresh (third-person singular simple present threshes, present participle threshing, simple past and past participle threshed)

1. (transitive, agriculture) To separate the grain from the straw or husks by mechanical beating, with a flail or machinery.
2. (transitive, literary) To beat soundly, usually with some tool such as a stick or whip; to drub.

• 2009: Stuart Heritage, Hecklerspray, Friday the 22 of May in 2009 at 1 o’clock p.m., “Jon & Kate Latest: People You Don’t Know Do Crap You Don’t Care About”

  You know all this kerfuffle about Jordan and Peter Andre, and how you don’t know if they’re really splitting up or it’s just an act, and how you can’t be bothered to find out because wasting even a fraction of your brainpower on those bright orange clueless dicksplats would make you just as bad as them and you’d feel duty-bound to fling yourself under an industrial threshing machine as penance? You do? Good.

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  hort.purdue.edu
  Factsheet on this grain crop with production practices and a life cycle similar to that of spring wheat or oats, its history, uses, varieties and cultivation.
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  smallgrains.ncsu.edu
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