mills

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of mill.

   Cotton mills employed thousands of workers throughout the region.

   Water-powered mills ground grain for the surrounding farms.

   Note

   One plural covers very different things: grinding machines, the buildings that house them, juice presses, and the milling machines and cutters of a workshop. Cotton mills and grain mills usually mean buildings or businesses, while pepper mills are small enough for a table. The same spelling is also the present-tense verb, so the surrounding words decide. In "the mills closed," it names places; in "the plant mills ore," it names an action.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of mill.

   The plant mills raw ore into a fine powder before shipping it.

   Each autumn the cooperative mills the village's harvested grain.

   Note

   The verb form switches between work and wandering. Most uses take an object: a plant mills ore, a mint mills the edge of a coin, a shop mills a part from solid metal. One use takes none. Someone who mills about is moving aimlessly, and the particle about or around usually comes with it. That intransitive use is easy to miss, because the working sense dominates.

   A lone heifer mills about the empty pen.

   He mills around the station, waiting for no one in particular.

Showing meanings only. Show all 2