windmill
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈwɪn(d).mɪl/
Forms: form: windmills
form: windmilling
form: windmilled
form: windmilled
Etymology: From Middle English wyndmylne, wyndmylle, equivalent to wind + mill. Cognate with Scots wyndmyln, wyndmyl, Saterland Frisian Wíendmäälne, West Frisian wynmûne, Dutch windmolen, Afrikaans windmeul, Dutch Low Saxon windmölle (Achterhooks), wiendmeule (Drents, Veluws), German Low German Windmöhl, German Windmühle, Danish vindmølle, Norwegian Bokmål vindmølle, Norwegian Nynorsk vindmølle, vindmylne, Swedish vindmölla, Icelandic vindmylla.
(imaginary enemy): A reference to Don Quixote tilting at windmills.
Senses: examples: text: She ran down the hill, windmilling her arms with glee.
text: The main thing now was to find the steering wheel. At first, Billy windmilled his arms, hoping to find it by luck.
ref: 1969, Kurt Vonnegut, chapter 2, in Slaughterhouse-Five, New York: Dial, published 2005, page 59:
text: True to her word, her hips windmilled in a frenzy.
ref: 1999, Jon Sharpe, Texas Hellion:
text: As the Pirate Captain strained at the ham, the whale began to spasm and buck about in the water. Its tail thrashed wildly up and down. Its flippers windmilled in the air uselessly.
ref: 2005, Gideon Defoe, The Pirates!: in an adventure with Ahab, page 140:
glosses: To rotate with a sweeping motion.
examples: text: The axle broke and the wheel windmilled in place briefly before careening through the wall.
glosses: To (become disengaged and) rotate freely.
raw_tags: of a rotating part of a machine
examples: text: The stern dropped just as the captain began to get his control room crew to react to orders again. His head struck an instrument console. What slim hopes his crew had died with him. The Politovskiy was falling backwards, her propeller windmilling the wrong way as she slid to the bottom of the sea.
ref: 1984, Tom Clancy, “The Eighth Day: Friday, 10 December”, in The Hunt for Red October, Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, →ISBN, page 195:
text: When he went to switch on his rotary engine again, the Le Rhone refused to pick up. Nothing happened! The propeller simply windmilled in the slip stream. Garros knew immediately what was wrong and cursed himself for his imbecility.
ref: 2000, Walter J. Boyne, Philip Handleman, Brassey's Air Combat Reader, page 18:
text: The propeller windmilled in front of them. Creede tried to start the engine. It growled like something angry, died away. "We're ... gonna have to ... ride this thing ... to the ground."
ref: 2004, Deborah Bedford, If I Had You:
text: […] the propeller blade on number-four engine windmilled in the air stream. "I wasn't too concerned about it, really," recalls Butchart. "B-29 engines are not all that dependable."
ref: 2006, James R. Hansen, First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong, page 134:
topics: aeronautics
aerospace
aviation
business
engineering
natural-sciences
nautical
physical-sciences
transport
glosses: To (become disengaged and) rotate freely.
To be rotated by the force of the fluid passing through (the propeller or turbine rotor).
raw_tags: of a propeller or turbine rotor
of a rotating part of a machine
glosses: To move in order to rotate the penis in a circle (similar to the rotation of a windmill).
Related terms: mill
molinology
windpump
wind turbine