mill post (milpost)

A stout post bearing some e ential relation to a mill, as a post forming the vertical shaft of a windmill, and especially, in some forms of windmill, as the post-mill, the post upon which the entire mill is supported, or a post upon which the cap of a smock-mill, bearing ing the sails, turns. They [the trees of New England) are not very thick, yet many of them are sufficient to make Mill - posts ; some being three foot and a half in the Diameter. S. Clarke , Four Plantations in America (1670), p. 30. Out of doors reigned Molly Mills, with her short red petticoat, legs like mill posts . Lady Holland , Sydney Smith, vii. mill-race (mil'rās), n. The current of water that drives a mill-wheel, or the channel in which it flows from the dam to the mill.