windmill
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: compound
Topics: aeronautics
aerospace
arts
aviation
ball-games
baseball
basketball
board-games
business
chess
dance
dancing
engineering
entertainment
games
hobbies
juggling
lifestyle
music
natural-sciences
nautical
performing-arts
physical-sciences
sports
transport
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.
Compound parts: wind
mill
Inflected forms:
form: windmills
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: windmills
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: windmilling
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: windmilled
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: windmilled
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: A machine which translates linear motion of wind to rotational motion by means of adjustable vanes called sails.
pos: noun
examples: Turbines have been around for a long time—windmills and water wheels are early examples. The name comes from the Latin turbo, meaning vortex, and thus the defining property of a turbine is that a fluid or gas turns the blades of a rotor, which is attached to a shaft that can perform useful work.
gloss: The building or structure containing such machinery.
pos: noun
examples: There was once a windmill and a baker's shop in the middle of Rabbitland. Three rabbits, Rodney, Rudolph and Rosie lived in the windmill.
The home of the high-spirited French can-can has been laid temporarily low after the sails of the red-painted windmill on top of the Moulin Rouge, the most celebrated cabaret in Paris, tumbled inexplicably to the ground in the early hours.
gloss: A wind turbine, a device for converting wind power into electricity.
pos: noun
tags: colloquial
proscribed
examples: “I never understood wind. You know, I know windmills very much. They’re noisy. They kill the birds. You want to see a bird graveyard? Go under a windmill someday. You’ll see more birds than you’ve ever seen in your life.”
“The other thing I say to Europe: we’ve – we will not allow a windmill to be built in the United States. They’re killing us. They’re killing the beauty of our scenery.”
gloss: A child's toy consisting of vanes mounted on a stick that rotate when blown by a person or by the wind.
pos: noun
gloss: A dunk where the dunker swings his arm in a circular motion before throwing the ball through the hoop.
pos: noun
gloss: A pitch where the pitcher swings his arm in a circular motion before throwing the ball.
pos: noun
gloss: A guitar move where the strumming hand mimics a turning windmill.
pos: noun
gloss: A breakdancing move in which the dancer rolls their torso continuously in a circular path on the floor, across the upper chest, shoulders and back, while twirling the legs in a V shape in the air.
pos: noun
gloss: Any of various muscle exercises in which a large deal of the body makes a great circle, typically one where a kettlebell is raised overhead and the torso is rotated to the other side with the hand reaching its foot (hitting the core, glutes, hamstrings, trapezius, rhomboids, deltoids and rotator cuffs) but sometimes even a windshield wiper.
pos: noun
gloss: Any of various large papilionid butterflies of the genus Byasa, the wings of which resemble the vanes of a windmill.
pos: noun
gloss: The false shower.
pos: noun
gloss: An imaginary enemy, but presented as real.
pos: noun
tags: figuratively
examples: to fight windmills
gloss: The act of windmilling.
pos: noun
gloss: A tactic in which a piece repeatedly gains material, while simultaneously creating an inescapable series of alternating direct and discovered checks.
pos: noun
gloss: To rotate with a sweeping motion.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
transitive
examples: She ran down the hill, windmilling her arms with glee.
The main thing now was to find the steering wheel. At first, Billy windmilled his arms, hoping to find it by luck.
True to her word, her hips windmilled in a frenzy.
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.
gloss: To (become disengaged and) rotate freely.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: The axle broke and the wheel windmilled in place briefly before careening through the wall.
gloss: To (become disengaged and) rotate freely.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: 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.
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.
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."
[…] 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."
gloss: To move in order to rotate the penis in a circle (similar to the rotation of a windmill).
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
slang
Related words: mill
molinology
windpump
wind turbine
Derived words: cap over the windmill
fight windmills
giddy as a windmill
hat over the windmill
mistake windmills for giants
pink windmills
throw one's cap over the windmill
throw one's hat over the windmill
tilt at windmills
windmill graph
windmill grass
windmill palm
windmill pink
windmill restart
windmills in one's head
Translations:
lang: Bulgarian
word: въртя се свободно
roman: vǎrtja se svobodno
lang: Finnish
word: pyöriä
lang: Finnish
word: kieppua