different between windlass vs windles

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.

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?w?nd?lz/

Etymology 1

See windle.

Noun

windles

1. plural of windle

Etymology 2

From slurred pronunciation of windlass.

Noun

windles

1. A winch, a windlass.

Translations

References

• Walter William Skeat (1884) An etymological dictionary of the English language.
• Henry Sweet (1888) A history of English sounds from the earliest period: with full word-lists

Anagrams

• Swindle, swindle, wildens