quixotic, (at) full tilt, Tilting Train, tilting at windmills, joust, arch-enemy, yonder

The Presidential Candidate Who Has His Own Supporters Scratching Their Heads

Gov. Doug Burgum’s quixotic presidential campaign has baffled even North Dakotans, but then again, many of the 2024 hopefuls have prompted the same wonder.

“Our team has been working at full tilt for weeks, with the focus and urgency this moment calls for.”

— Yale Health Director Dr. Paul Genecin on campus preparations for COVID-19

After years of squabbles and delays, development of the Oyu Tolgoi copper and gold mine in the Gobi desert seems to be back on track

After years of political and financial woes, Mongolia is back in business

At full tilt, the mine may account for a third of the country's economy

ECON.ST

It attracted scorn and mockery, but did the APT tilting train actually revolutionise the world of travel?

The laughing stock that changed the world

BBC.IN

Spotlight:

What ever happened to windmills? Are they still in use? With increased concern about the environment and diminishing fuel supplies, windmills are making a comeback these days. Windmills have been around for at least 1,500 years. Designed at first to pump water, they were modified and later used to grind grain, process spices and dyes, power saw mills and drive electrical generators. In the Netherlands, work is underway to make windmills a major generator of electricity. Today is National Windmill Day in the Netherlands. Some 600 windmills, water mills and pumping stations will be open to the public today, and millers will demonstrate the way their windmills work.

Quote:

"Pray look better, Sir... those things yonder are no giants, but windmills." — Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

Powell Jousts With Cheney on Path of Republican Party
By ADAM NAGOURNEY Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell’s public dispute with the former vice president underlined an internal struggle over the future of the party.

Snowfall in London is not unlike the city's quixotic bus service: you wait for what seems an eternity only for several to arrive in quick succession. Serial flurries starting on Sunday had by Monday morning spread a nice little blanket of snow across the British capital. It was only 6 inches deep, but it managed to shut down or sharply curtail service on most Tube lines, it caused chaos at airports, and it halted London's entire fleet of red buses.

Microsoft, Google Provide Great Web Joust in 2008
eWeek - New York, NY
By Clint Boulton Though always rivals, 2008 was the year Google and Microsoft officially recognized each other as archenemies, firing shot after shot across ...

傾斜式列車（或稱擺式列車、擺錘式列車、搖擺式列車、振子式列車[a]；英文譯名：Tilting Train）是一種車體轉彎時可以側向擺動的列車。相較於普通列車，傾斜式列車通過一般彎道時會以較快速度行駛，可以節省行駛時間。

3
tilt
noun

Definition of tilt

1. 1a :  a contest on horseback in which two combatants charging with lances or similar weapons try to unhorse each other :  joustb :  a tournament of tilts
2. 2a :  dispute, contentionb :  speed —used in the phrase full tilt
3. 3a :  the act of tilting :  the state or position of being tiltedb :  a sloping surfacec :  slant, bias tilt toward military involvement>

4:  any of various contests resembling or suggesting tilting with lances

tilt adjective

(at) full tilt

phrase of tilt

1. 1.

   with maximum energy or force; at top speed.

windmill 
noun [C]
1 a building or structure with large blades on the outside which, when turned by the force of the wind, provide the power for getting water out of the ground or crushing grain
See picture .

2 a wind turbine

3 (US ALSO pinwheel) a child's toy which consists of a stick with brightly coloured pieces of plastic at one end which turn around when you blow them or hold the toy in the wind

Tilting at windmills

Meaning

Attacking imaginary enemies.

Origin

Tilting is jousting. 'Tilting at windmills' derives from Cervantes' Don Quixote - first published in 1604, under the title The Ingenious Knight of La Mancha. The novel recounts the exploits of would-be knight 'Don Quixote' and his loyal servant Sancho Panza who propose to fight injustice through chivalry. It is considered one of the major literary masterpieces and remains a best seller in numerous translations. In the book, which also gives us the adjective quixotic (striving for visionary ideals), the eponymous hero imagines himself to be fighting giants when he attacks windmills.

Just then they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that rise from that plain. And no sooner did Don Quixote see them that he said to his squire, "Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we ourselves could have wished. Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them. With their spoils we shall begin to be rich for this is a righteous war and the removal of so foul a brood from off the face of the earth is a service God will bless."

"What giants?" asked Sancho Panza.

"Those you see over there," replied his master, "with their long arms. Some of them have arms well nigh two leagues in length."

"Take care, sir," cried Sancho. "Those over there are not giants but windmills. Those things that seem to be their arms are sails which, when they are whirled around by the wind, turn the millstone."

The figurative reference to tilting at windmills came a little later. John Cleveland published The character of a London diurnall in 1644 (a diurnall was, as you might expect, part-way between a diary or journal):

"The Quixotes of this Age fight with the Wind-mills of their owne Heads."

The full form of the phrase isn't used until towards the end of the 19th century. For example, in The New York Times, April 1870:

"They [Western Republicans] have not thus far had sufficient of an organization behind them to make their opposition to the Committee's bill anything more than tilting at windmills."

波尔与风车作战
波尔在自己漫长的职业生涯里曾经先后多次战胜过中国的几名尖子选手，其中包括目前排名世界男子单打前三位的王皓，马琳和王励勤。要想在北京奥运上夺得奖牌，他就必须至少战胜其中的一个。尽管27岁的波尔拥有丰富的比赛经验和辉煌的历史战绩，但在这样的形势之下，看好他的人并不多。德国媒体认为，乒乓球名将蒂莫-波尔这次参加北京奥运会就如同是和一架巨大的风车进行较量。


Disparate universities, open-source engineers and quixotic aerospace start-ups are planning to start their own robotic missions to the moon, as part of the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize.

Go to Article from The New York Times»
Spreading Hope
IN HIS 2003 State of the Union address, President Bush surprised many when he proposed to take the fight against AIDS to Africa. At the time, slowing the spread of the disease seemed quixotic, particularly on a continent where only about 50,000 of the 30 million infected people received...
(The Washington Post)

"Dare to dream... and when you dream, dream big." — Henrietta Szold

Word of the Day:

quixotic
(qwik-SOT-ik)
adjective
1. Absurdly chivalrous, idealistic, or impractical.
2. Impulsive, unpredictable.
[After Don Quixote, hero of the eponymous novel by Miguel de Cervantes
(1547-1616). Earliest documented use: 1718.]
Notes: Cervantes's novel has given us another idiom, tilting at windmills:
fighting with imaginary or invincible opponents. In the novel, Don Quixote
perceives windmills in the distance as giants and proceeds to attack them.
The word tilt here is a synonym for jousting.]


quixotic
adjective LITERARY
having or showing ideas that are imaginative but not practical or likely to succeed:
This is a vast, exciting and some say quixotic project.


joust 
verb [I]
1 (in the past) to fight with a lance (= a long pointed weapon) while riding on a horse, especially as a sport

2 to compete, especially for power or control:
Manchester United and Liverpool are jousting for position at the top of the football league.

━━ n., vi. 馬上槍試合（を行う） ((with)); 競技［試合］に出る.

arch-enemy Show phonetics
noun [C]
an especially bad enemy