Meaning
To attack imaginary enemies or waste effort fighting opponents that exist mainly in one's own imagination; to pursue a vain, quixotic cause. 'Tilt' here is the older word for jousting with a lance. Literary register; gently mocking or pitying connotation, implying misplaced idealism rather than malice. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The idiom comes from the famous episode in Cervantes' Don Quixote (Part I, 1605) in which the knight charges windmills he believes to be giants. The novel reached English through Thomas Shelton's 1612 translation (which rendered the windmills oddly as 'wine-mills'), and it was later translations, notably John Phillips's 1687 version, that fixed the 'windmills' wording that became proverbial in English. Alongside 'quixotic', it is one of several expressions the novel contributed to the language. The figurative English use was well established by the 18th century, though the exact earliest citation varies between references and is not pinned down by the sources consulted here.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- charge at windmills
- fight windmills
- tilting at windmills
Usage Examples
- Filing complaints against a law that does not exist is just tilting at windmills.
- Her one-woman campaign against the homeowners' association began to look like tilting at windmills.
- He spends so much energy tilting at windmills that real problems go unaddressed.