glean

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. v. To gather grain left behind by reapers.
2. v. To gather (grain) left behind by reapers.
3. v. To collect bit by bit: "records from which historians glean their knowledge” ( Kemp Malone). See Synonyms at reap.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. To gather after a reaper, or on a reaped field; bring together from a scattered condition, as grain left after the removal of the main crop.
2. Hence To collect in scattered or fragmentary parcels or portions; pick up here and there; gather slowly and assiduously.
3. To gather stalks or ears of grain left by reapers; also, to collect or gather anything in a similar way.
4. n. A handful of corntied together by a gleaner.
5. n. Anything gathered or gleaned.
6. n. A somewhat indefinite unit; a bunch: as, a glean of teazels. [Essex and Gloucestershire, Eng.] A glean of herrings, by a statute of Edward I., is 25.
7. n. The afterbirth, as of a cow or other domestic animal; the cleaning.

Wiktionary

1. v. To harvest grain left behind after the crop has been reaped.
2. v. To gather information in small amounts, with implied difficulty, bit by bit.
3. v. To frugally accumulate resources from low-yield contexts.
4. n. obsolete cleaning; afterbirth

GNU Webster's 1913

1. v. To gather after a reaper; to collect in scattered or fragmentary parcels, as the grain left by a reaper, or grapes left after the gathering.
2. v. To gather from (a field or vineyard) what is left.
3. v. To collect with patient and minute labor; to pick out; to obtain.
4. v. To gather stalks or ears of grain left by reapers.
5. v. To pick up or gather anything by degrees.
6. n. A collection made by gleaning.
7. n. obsolete Cleaning; afterbirth.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. gather, as of natural products