Word.ws English Dictionary

mistake windmills for giants

mistake windmills for giants verb: to perceive ordinary, nonthreatening objects or situations as significant dangers or adversaries, often due to an overly romantic, idealistic, or deluded worldview.

Verb

mistake windmills for giants (third-person singular simple present mistakes windmills for giants, present participle mistaking windmills for giants, simple past mistook windmills for giants, past participle mistaken windmills for giants)

  1. (idiomatic, informal) To perceive ordinary, nonthreatening objects or situations as significant dangers or adversaries, often due to an overly romantic, idealistic, or deluded worldview.

Forms of mistake windmills for giants

third-person singular presentmistakes windmills for giants
present participlemistaking windmills for giants
pastmistook windmills for giants
past participlemistaken windmills for giants

Origin of mistake windmills for giants

Something to do with Don Quixote...

Questions about mistake windmills for giants

What does mistake windmills for giants mean?
Mistake windmills for giants means to perceive ordinary, nonthreatening objects or situations as significant dangers or adversaries, often due to an overly romantic, idealistic, or deluded worldview.
What part of speech is mistake windmills for giants?
Mistake windmills for giants is a verb.
What is the past tense of mistake windmills for giants?
The past tense of mistake windmills for giants is mistook windmills for giants.

Words near mistake windmills for giants in the dictionary

  1. mistakable
  2. mistakably
  3. mistake
  4. mistake fare
  5. mistake fares
  6. mistake windmills for giants
  7. mistakeability
  8. mistakeable
  9. mistakeably
  10. mistaked
  11. mistakedly

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mistake windmills for giants (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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