mill¹ / mil/ • n. 1. a building equipped with machinery for grinding grain into flour. ∎  a piece of machinery of this type. ∎  a domestic device for grinding a solid substance to powder or pulp: a coffee mill. ∎  a building fitted with machinery for a manufacturing process: a steel mill | [as adj.] a mill town. ∎  a piece of manufacturing machinery. ∎  a place that processes things or people in a mechanical way: a correspondence school that was just a diploma mill.2. inf. an engine.3. inf., dated a boxing match or a fistfight.• v. 1. [tr.] grind or crush (something) in a mill: hard wheats are easily milled into white flour | [as adj.] (milled) freshly milled black pepper. ∎  cut or shape (metal) with a rotating tool: [as adj.] (milling) lathes and milling machines. ∎  [usu. as adj.] (milled) produce regular ribbed markings on the edge of (a coin) as a protection against illegal clipping.2. [intr.] (mill about/around) (of people or animals) move around in a confused mass: people milled about the room, shaking hands | [as adj.] (milling) the milling crowds of guests. PHRASES: go (or put someone) through the mill undergo (or cause someone to undergo) an unpleasant experience.DERIVATIVES: mill·a·ble adj.mill² • n. a monetary unit used only in calculations, worth one thousandth of a dollar.

mill go (or put someone) through the mill undergo (or cause someone to undergo) an unpleasant experience.
the mill cannot grind with the water that is past an opportunity that has been missed cannot then be used; proverbial saying, early 17th century. (Compare opportunity never knocks twice at any man's door.)
the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small proverbial saying, mid 17th century; ultimately from an anonymous verse in Sextus Empiricus Adversus Mathematicos, ‘the mills of the gods are late to grind, but they grind small.’ The exact wording of the current form of the proverb is a quotation from Longfellow's ‘Retribution’.

See also millstone.

milling The term usually refers to the conversion of cereal grain into its derivative, e.g. wheat into flour, brown rice to white rice.

Flour milling involves two types of rollers: (1)break rollers are corrugated and exert shear pressure and forces which break up the wheat grain and permit sieving into fractions containing varying proportions of germ, bran, and endosperm;(2)reducing rollers are smooth and subdivide the endosperm into fine particles. See also flour, extraction rate.

mill building fitted with apparatus for grinding corn OE.; the apparatus itself XVI; building in which an industry or manufacture is carried on XVI. OE. mylen m. and fem.:- *mulino, -ina, for late L. molīnus, -īna, -inum, f. and repl. L. mola grindstone, mill (see MEAL1).
Hence millstone late OE. mill vb. XVI.

MILL

One-tenth of one cent: $0.001. A mill rate is used by many localities to compute property taxes. For example, some states levy a one-time nonrecurringtax of two mills per dollar (0.2%) on the fair market value of all notes, bonds, and other obligations for payment of money that are secured by mortgage, deed of trust, or other lien on real property in lieu of all other taxes on such property.