different between windless vs windlass

English

Etymology

From Middle English wyndles, equivalent to wind +? -less. Cognate with Old Norse vindlauss (“windless”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?w?ndl?s/
• Homophone: windlass

Adjective

windless (comparative more windless, superlative most windless)

1. Devoid of wind; calm.
   • 1820, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound, London: C. & J. Ollier, Act IV, p. 150,^[1]

     Ye kings of suns and stars, Dæmons and Gods,

     Ætherial Dominations, who possess

     Elysian, windless, fortunate abodes

     Beyond Heaven’s constellated wilderness:

   • 1881, Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady, Volume I, Chapter 12,^[2]

     “ […] It’s for life, Miss Archer, it’s for life,” Lord Warburton repeated in the kindest, tenderest, pleasantest voice Isabel had ever heard, and looking at her with eyes charged with the light of a passion that had sifted itself clear of the baser parts of emotion—the heat, the violence, the unreason—and that burned as steadily as a lamp in a windless place.

   • 1928, D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Chapter 2,^[3]

     […] when the wind was that way, which was often, the house was full of the stench of this sulphurous combustion of the earth’s excrement. But even on windless days the air always smelt of something under-earth: sulphur, iron, coal, or acid.

2. Out of breath.
   • 1600, Philemon Holland (translator), The Romane Historie Written by T. Livius of Padua, London: George Sawbridge, 1659, Book 8, p. 253,^[4]

     Then came others one after another, windless with running, crying out and saying, that all was gone: and that every where the souldiers goods were rifled, ransacked and carried clean away.

   • 1608, Thomas Dekker, “City-Hunting” in Lanthorne and Candle-Light, published in The Guls Hornbook and The Belman of London in two parts, London: J.M. Dent, 1905, p. 211,^[5]

     This Ferret-Hunting hath his Seasons as other games have, and is onely followed at such a time of yeare, when the Gentry of our kingdome by riots, having chased them-selves out of the faire revenewes and large possession left to them by their ancestors, are forced to hide their heads like Conies, in little caves and in unfrequented places: or else being almost windles, by running after sensuall pleasures too feircely, they are glad (for keeping them-selves in breath so long as they can) to fal to Ferret-hunting, that is to say, to take up commodities.

Translations

See also

• breathless

Noun

windless (plural windlesses)

1. (obsolete) Alternative form of windlass
   • 1661, “Of making cloth with sheeps wool,” in The History of the Royal Society of London for Improving of Natural Knowledge, Volume I, London: A. Millar, 1756, p. 62,^[6]

     The next work is racking or tentering the cloth […] and this is performed by setting it in a frame, which we call tenters, such as are to be seen in many fields about London, wherein (it having a windless at one end) it is first strained to its length, then afterwards to its breadth and parallelism […]

   • 1724, Daniel Defoe, A General History of the Pirates, London: T. Warner, 2nd edition, Chapter, pp. 114-115,^[7]

     […] the Boatswain immediately called to his Consorts, laid hold of the Captain, and made him fast to the Windless, and there pelted him with Glass Bottles, which cut him in a sad Manner […]

Anagrams

• Swindles, swindles, wildness

English

Alternative forms

• windless (obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle English wyndlas, wyndelas, wyndlasse, wyndelasse, probably an alteration (due to Middle English windel) of Middle English windas, wyndas, wyndace, from Anglo-Norman windase, windeis and Old Northern French windas (compare Old French guindas, Medieval Latin windasius, windasa), from Old Norse vindáss (“windlass”, literally “winding-pole”), from vinda (“to wind”) + áss (“pole”). Compare Icelandic vindilass.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /?w?nd.l?s/

Homophone: windless

Noun

windlass (plural windlasses)

1. Any of various forms of winch, in which a rope or cable is wound around a cylinder, used for lifting heavy weights
2. A winding and circuitous way; a roundabout course.
   • 1599, William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Ham II. i. 65:

     With windlasses and with assays of bias, / By indirections find directions out.

3. An apparatus resembling a winch or windlass, for bending the bow of an arblast, or crossbow.

Translations

Verb

windlass (third-person singular simple present windlasses, present participle windlassing, simple past and past participle windlassed)

1. To raise with, or as if with, a windlass; to use a windlass.
   • 1882, Constance Gordon-Cumming, "Ningpo and the Buddhist Temples", in The Century Magazine

     A favoring breeze enabled us to sail all the way down the lake, and (having been windlassed across the haul-over) even down the canals.

2. To take a roundabout course; to work warily or by indirect means.
   • a. 1660, Henry Hammond, a sermon

     He could not expect to allure him forward, and therefore drives him as far back as he can; that so he may be the more sure of him at the rebound; as a skilful woodsman, that by windlassing presently gets a shoot, which, without taking a compass and thereby a commodious stand, he could never have obtained.