Word.ws English Dictionary

tilting at windmills

tilting at windmills is the present participle and gerund of tilt at windmills.

Meaning of tilt at windmills

Verb

tilt at windmills (third-person singular simple present tilts at windmills, present participle tilting at windmills, simple past and past participle tilted at windmills)

  1. (idiomatic, intransitive) To attack imaginary enemies.
    Synonyms:
    charge at windmills, fight windmills
  2. (broadly, idiomatic, intransitive) To go on a wild-goose chase; to persistently engage in a futile activity.
    Synonyms:
    chase a rainbow

Questions about tilting at windmills

What is tilting at windmills the present participle and gerund of?
Tilting at windmills is the present participle and gerund of tilt at windmills.

Words near tilting at windmills in the dictionary

  1. tilth
  2. tilther
  3. tilthers
  4. tilths
  5. tilting
  6. tilting at windmills
  7. tiltings
  8. tiltlike
  9. tiltmeter
  10. tiltmeters
  11. Tilton

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tilting at windmills (page history and authors); tilt at windmills (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “tilting at windmills.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tilting_at_windmills. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.