tail-pole

See also: tailpole and tail pole

English

Alternative forms

• tail pole, tailpole

Etymology

tail +‎ pole

Noun

tail-pole (plural tail-poles)

1. A wooden pole, usually fifteen to twenty-five long and nine inches in diameter, used to rotate a windmill into the wind.
   • 2011, Stanley Freese, Windmills and Millwrighting, Cambridge University Press, page 40:

     Old post-mills were turned or 'luffed' into the wind by a pole variously called the tail-pole, tail-beam, turning-beam, or tiller-beam.

   • 1960, Thomas Kingston Derry, Trevor Illtyd Williams, A Short History of Technology from the Earliest Times to A.D. 1900, Courier Corporation, page 256:

     For a long time the turning was done manually, simply by pushing on a long tail-pole extending downwards, almost to the ground, from the rotatable superstructure.

Synonyms

• tail-beam
• turning-beam
• tiller-beam