Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2020 January 3

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

January 3

Windmills

Windmill to pump water, 1880s

Windmill to make electricity, 1887

Windmills to make electricity, 1980s - similar height, similar lattice tower, but now fewer blades

I have just popped over here from the discussion at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Miscellaneous#Falling windmills. It took me some time to realise that the OP was asking about wind turbines, rather than a device that used wind to grind something. That IP editor geolocates to New York. The two respondents, both from the UK, used the latter term. Here in Australia, I can't recall wind turbines ever being called windmills. Is using the term "windmill" for a "wind turbine" largely an American thing? HiLo48 (talk) 22:44, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

The term windmill is used for a number of things in America, including wind turbine (as Trump did recently), but the term "wind turbine" is still widely used for those electricity-generating structures. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:20, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I looked at windmill, and observed that it has two pictures of what I call wind turbines, diplomatically(?) using the two different names between them. (Have we begun to use Trump as the exemplar of good English language usage?) HiLo48 (talk) 23:26, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

I call them windmills, and it has nothing to do with Trump. I just think "wind turbine" is not a great name. To me a turbine is a structure that has layers (generally plural) of vanes, and is ordinarily enclosed in a cylindrical wall. The power generators don't look like that at all; they look much more similar to classic windmills, and I'm not sure why we need another name. --Trovatore (talk) 23:35, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks (and I was joking about Trump; I hope Bugs was too), but your location brings me back to the final sentence of my initial post here. Is using the term "windmill" for a "wind turbine" largely an American thing? HiLo48 (talk) 00:13, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

That I really don't know. I just think it's a better name than "wind turbine". --Trovatore (talk) 01:00, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Agree. I don't think most Americans know what a turbine is. They look like windmills and that's one less syllable. Jmar67 (talk) 01:55, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

"They look like windmills" Not to me. I've always visualised a windmill as a thing on a Dutch dyke, or a sort of similar looking thing used for MILLing grain. Neither of those look anything like a modern wind turbine. HiLo48 (talk) 03:44, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Well, but the wind-power gadgets don't look anything like anything I think of as a "turbine", such as a steam turbine or a water turbine or a turboprop. --Trovatore (talk) 04:30, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

A fair perspective. In my youth, over half a century ago, I briefly worked in a maintenance gang in a coal fired power station, so yes, I know that kind of turbine. But just because those new fangled wind driven things look different shouldn't mean we name them after something else they don't look like. HiLo48 (talk) 22:47, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Well, it's a judgment call of course, but to me the power generators do look a fair amount like the grain-grinding windmills. The most common sort have two or three long blades, much longer than the radius of the central housing. The grain-grinding ones maybe most commonly have four? The other sorts of power turbines generally have a large number of vanes, either contained within the central housing or at least not greatly larger than it. I think the windpower generators look a lot more like windmills. But this is of course a matter of perception. --Trovatore (talk) 04:45, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

Trump did, in fact, use the term "windmills".[1] I think of windmills as being used for pumping water, like on a farm or in the Netherlands. That contrasts with water turbines (such as the ones at Hoover Dam) and wind turbines. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:38, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

In my experience, "windmill" is the ordinary word for the things in the UK. --ColinFine (talk) 10:58, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

In my experience, "windmill" is never used for these things in the UK as it is the common name for a type of Mill with big sails on it. MilborneOne (talk) 11:04, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

windmill always conjours images of two huge great circular stones milling grain, powered by the wind for me. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A01:E34:EF5E:4640:41ED:BCB4:C707:D0ED (talk) 11:40, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Well, sure, but it's not like you see the millstones from outside the structure. Matt Deres (talk) 14:49, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

For what it's worth, while I accept the various meanings and implications above, the first thing "windmill" makes me (someone who grew up in North America in the 1950s/60s) think of is one of these, with a large number of small metal blades. The windmill article says they would normally be used to drive water pumps, but I was under the impression they could also operate a generator to provide some electricity to the farm. --142.112.159.101 (talk) 09:13, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

Yes, of course, and this Australian should have remembered those things too. There were plenty of them here and they WERE called windmills. They did pump water. I can't remember them being used to generate electricity. Time has moved on, and most such pumps today in Australia are driven by solar panels. The old style are being preserved at least in a museum Penong, South Australia. If you want, you can pick up a miniaturised version for your garden on ebay. HiLo48 (talk) 22:17, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

Without wanting to sound presrciptivist, the clue is very much in the name; a windmill is a mill powered by wind, a watermill one powered by water and so on. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A01:E34:EF5E:4640:184E:B927:3C9:EA93 (talk) 12:55, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

To make that properly prescriptivist, you would need to define "mill". In its presumably original form, it was a machine for grinding grain, but we all know the language has moved on. Our disambiguation page Mill isn't immediately helpful. It doesn't mention things used to generate electricity. It does contain List of types of mill, but that doesn't mention the electricity creating ones either, apart from linking us back to windmill, where this all began and where they do crack a mention well down the page. But that leaves us with a circular definition. HiLo48 (talk) 22:04, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

Here in northern England where we seldom see the ones with sails, some people do call the generators windmills, but wind turbines is the more common term. Dbfirs 14:59, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

The cartographers at Ordnance Survey (the UK's official map makers) have three separate symbols; "Windmill, with or without sails", "Wind pump" and "wind turbine", which you can see here. Alansplodge (talk) 21:38, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

Well in the 19th century an American apparently invented this mostly lifting well water and called it a windmill and they became very widespread, so branching out from the dutch windmill has a history in America, which perhaps transferred now to these newer structures that also spin in the wind. Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:11, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

It's all in the mind, no? Deor (talk) 23:31, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

Let;s just put some pictures in this answer. Rmhermen (talk) 18:56, 6 January 2020 (UTC)