This week’s theme
Tools and devices that became metaphors

This week’s words
chalk line
ratchet
parish pump
windmill
Swiss Army knife

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(WIND-mil)

MEANING:

noun:	1. A machine powered by wind.
	2. An imagined enemy, opponent, or threat.
verb tr., intr.:	To move or to cause to move like a windmill.

ETYMOLOGY:

From wind, from Old English wind + mill, from Old English mylen, from Latin mola (grindstone, mill), from molere (to grind). Earliest documented use: 1230.]

NOTES:

The metaphorical sense of windmill comes spinning out of Cervantes’ Don Quixote, in which our deluded hero mistakes windmills for towering foes and launches a one-man attack against renewable energy.

To tilt at windmills now means to battle imaginary enemies. It’s an expression that reminds us: sometimes the real enemy isn’t the windmill -- it’s the wind between our ears.

USAGE:

“If the Tories had set out in government with the aim of deliberately making themselves unpopular, they might not have proceeded very differently. What would a strategy for Conservative electoral suicide have required? The economy suffocated. (Tick!) The party brand painted in old contaminants: tax favours for the rich, public services cut, chaos in the NHS, boggle-eyed tilts at European windmills, scowls for immigrants. (Tick!) The whole package seasoned with division, U-turns, and incompetence. (Tick!)”
Rafael Behr; The Politics Column; New Statesman (London, UK); Apr 26, 2013.

See more usage examples of windmill in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: