Other forms: windmills
A windmill is the tower with turning sails driven by the wind. An old windmill, the windmill sails, restore the windmill.
Traditional windmills ground grain or pumped water, and the sails turn a shaft that drives the machinery inside. A modern wind turbine generates electricity, and although people call them windmills, the technical word is turbine. Post mills and tower mills are the two main old kinds. Note tilting at windmills, meaning fighting imaginary enemies, from Don Quixote, who charged a row of them believing they were giants.
1nounwindmillA tower with sails turned by the wind to drive machinery.
“The windmill ground flour until about 1928.”
synonyms: wind turbine, turbine
windmill is a wind-driven machine.
Also accepted in games: wind turbine, turbine
The word is a plain compound of wind and mill, recorded from the twelfth century. Mill comes from Latin mola, a millstone, which arrived in Old English early — so the machine is half Latin and half Germanic.
Middle English
wyndmylne
English, today
windmill
From Middle English wyndmylne. From Middle English wyndmylne, wyndmylle, equivalent to wind + mill. Cognate with Scots wyndmyln, wyndmyl, stq Wíendmäälne, West Frisian wynmûne, Dutch windmolen, Afrikaans windmeul, nds-nl 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.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA