: a mill or machine operated by the wind usually acting on oblique vanes or sails that radiate from a horizontal shaft
especially: a wind-driven water pump or electric generator
b
: the wind-driven wheel of a windmill
2
: something that resembles or suggests a windmill
especially: a calisthenic exercise that involves alternately lowering each outstretched hand to touch the toes of the opposite foot
3
[from the episode in Don Quixote by Cervantes in which the hero attacks windmills under the illusion that they are giants]: an imaginary wrong, evil, or opponent—usually used in the phrase to tilt at windmills
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Noun
If that architecture is leaky, expensive, and brittle, the more visible parts of the transition, batteries, windmills, and solar farms, are harder to deploy at scale.—Kapil Kajal, Interesting Engineering, 23 Sep. 2025 The towering windmills reaching up to the sky produced 10% of all the electricity used in the state in 2023.—Karl Schneider, IndyStar, 21 Sep. 2025
Verb
All the same, Antonoff wears muscle shirts onstage and jumps off stacks of amps and pumps his fist in the air and plays windmill chords on his Gretsch Princess guitar.—Andrew Marantz, The New Yorker, 16 May 2022 The young center fielder stepped out of the batter’s box, grabbing at her shoulder, trying to windmill her arm in tiny circles.—Los Angeles Times, 2 May 2022 See All Example Sentences for windmill
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