Word.ws English Dictionary

throw one's cap over the windmill

throw one's cap over the windmill verb: to act in a bizarre, eccentric or immoral manner.

Verb

throw one's cap over the windmill (third-person singular simple present throws one's cap over the windmill, present participle throwing one's cap over the windmill, simple past threw one's cap over the windmill, past participle thrown one's cap over the windmill)

  1. (dated, idiomatic) To act in a bizarre, eccentric or immoral manner.
    • Awfully commercial, women nowadays. Our grandmothers threw their caps over the mills, of course, but, by Jove, their granddaughters only throw their caps over mills that can raise the wind for them.1892, Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan, Act III
    • Even Catherine’s own mother scandalized her daughter by succumbing to the contagion of the place, and “throwing her cap over the windmill,” as the French have it.1914, E. A. Brayley Hodgetts, The Life of Catherine the Great of Russia

Synonyms of throw one's cap over the windmill

Forms of throw one's cap over the windmill

third-person singular presentthrows one's cap over the windmill
present participlethrowing one's cap over the windmill
pastthrew one's cap over the windmill
past participlethrown one's cap over the windmill

Origin of throw one's cap over the windmill

Probably a calque of French jeter son bonnet par-dessus les moulins . Widely reported as deriving from a passage in the novel Don Quixote in which the titular character throws his cap over a windmill that he has mistaken for a giant, as a challenge. However, no such passage exists in the book.

Words formed from throw one's cap over the windmill

Questions about throw one's cap over the windmill

What does throw one's cap over the windmill mean?
Throw one's cap over the windmill means to act in a bizarre, eccentric or immoral manner.
What part of speech is throw one's cap over the windmill?
Throw one's cap over the windmill is a verb.
What is the past tense of throw one's cap over the windmill?
The past tense of throw one's cap over the windmill is threw one's cap over the windmill.

Words near throw one's cap over the windmill in the dictionary

  1. throw off
  2. throw off balance
  3. throw off on
  4. throw off the trail
  5. throw on
  6. throw one's cap over the windmill
  7. throw one's hat in the ring
  8. throw one's hat into the ring
  9. throw one's hat over the fence
  10. throw one's hat over the wall
  11. throw one's hat over the windmill

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: throw one's cap over the windmill (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-throw one's cap over the windmill.ogg.

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