windmill

IPA: wˈɪndmɪɫ

A machine which translates linear motion of wind to rotational motion by means of adjustable vanes called sails.
The structure containing such machinery.
A child's toy consisting of vanes mounted on a stick that rotate when blown by a person or by the wind.
(basketball) A dunk where the dunker swings his arm in a circular motion before throwing the ball through the hoop.
(baseball) A pitch where the pitcher swings his arm in a circular motion before throwing the ball.
A guitar move where the strumming hand mimics a turning windmill.
A breakdancing move in which the dancer rolls his/her torso continuously in a circular path on the floor, across the upper chest, shoulders and back, while twirling the legs in a V shape in the air.
Any of various muscle exercises in which a large deal of the body makes a great circle, typically one where a kettlebell is raised overhead and the torso is rotated to the other side with the hand reaching its foot (hitting the core, glutes, hamstrings, trapezius, rhomboids, deltoids and rotator cuffs) but sometimes even a windshield wiper.
Any of various large papilionid butterflies of the genus Byasa, the wings of which resemble the vanes of a windmill.
(juggling) The false shower.
(figurative) An imaginary enemy, but presented as real.
The act of windmilling.

(transitive, intransitive) To rotate with a sweeping motion.
(intransitive, of a rotating part of a machine) To (become disengaged and) rotate freely.
(intransitive, aviation, nautical, of a propeller or turbine rotor) To be rotated by the force of the fluid passing through (the propeller or turbine rotor).
To move in order to rotate the penis in a circle (similar to the rotation of a windmill).

Examples of "windmill" in Sentences

There's another one we call the windmill technique.
He had declared himself against the windmill from the start.
"The windmill is my trademark, ever since high school if I'm clear on a break."
Note the big difference in how prominent the sound of the physically identical windmill is between the two?
Half-finished, the windmill is suddenly destroyed, at the hands, so says Napoleon, of the traitor, Snowball.
The windmill is a machine for lifting water, turning wind power into dry land: trading energy for space, sixteenth-century style.
He saw ahead of him the heavy labour of rebuilding the windmill from the foundations, and already in imagination he braced himself for the task.
The symbolic nature of the windmill is itself important - it suggests an empty concentration, a meaningless, unheroic effort, for the idea is literally misguided.
Rebuilt completely, the windmill is once again destroyed, this time by Frederick and his followers who try to retake Animal Farm, but are defeated, inflicting many casualties on both sides.
Before he was six years old, he was once discovered at the top of his father's barn, fixing up what he called a windmill of his own construction, and at another time, while he was about the same age, he attended some men fixing a pump, and observing them cut off a piece of a bored part, he procured it, and actually made a pump, with which he raised water.