Windmill

How to spell windmill

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce windmill

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does windmill mean?

1. nounA building or structure with sails or blades turned by the wind, used to grind grain, pump water, or generate power.

Windmill in a sentence

• The old windmill on the hill once ground wheat for the whole village.

• The farm uses a windmill to pump water into the cattle troughs.

Where does windmill come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent Germanic compound, joining the Old English 'wind', meaning the natural movement of air, with 'mill', a word that traces back to the Latin 'mola', a grinding stone or millstone, which entered Old English as 'mylen'. The combined form appeared in Middle English around the late 1100s to describe a mill whose sails were turned by the wind rather than by water or by hand. For centuries such structures ground grain into flour, but the same design was later adapted to pump water and, eventually, to generate electricity. The spelling is refreshingly logical: both halves are spelled exactly as the familiar standalone words, and the only point to watch is the doubled 'l' that 'mill' carries on its own.

How the word is built

• wind (moving air)
• mill (machine for grinding or pumping)