Nearby Words

Windmills

[wind-mil] Origin

wind·mill

[wind-mil]
noun
1.
any of various machines for grinding, pumping, etc., driven by the force of the wind acting upon a number of vanes or sails.
2.
(loosely) a wind generator; wind plant.
3.
Aeronautics. a small air turbine with blades, like those of an airplane propeller, exposed on a moving aircraft and driven by the air, used to operate gasoline pumps, radio apparatus, etc.
4.
an imaginary opponent, wrong, etc. (in allusion to Cervantes' Don Quixote): to tilt at windmills.
verb (used without object), verb (used with object)
5.
Aeronautics. (of a propeller engine or turbojet engine) to rotate or cause to rotate solely under the force of a passing airstream.

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Windmills is always a great word to know.
So is interrobang. Does it mean:
an arrangement of five objects, as trees, in a square or rectangle, one at each corner and one in the middle.
a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question.

Origin:
1250–1300; Middle English; see wind1, mill1
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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Etymonline
Word Origin & History

windmill
c.1300, from wind (n.) + mill. Cf. Ger. Windmühle, Du. windmolen, Fr. moulin à vent (13c.). Verb meaning "to swing the arms wildly" is recorded from 1927.
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
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