English

Alternative forms

• milldam
• mill-dam

Noun

mill dam ‎(plural mill dams)

1. A dam constructed across a river or stream to raise the water level so that it can turn a millwheel; also, the millpond so created.
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, V.11:

     the which, once being brust, / Like to a great Mill-damb forth fiercely gusht, / And powred out of her infernall sinke / Most ugly filth […].

   • 1833, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, ‘The Miller's Daughter’:

     Or from the bridge I lean'd to hear / The milldam rushing down with noise, / And see the minnows everywhere / In crystal eddies glance and poise […].

   • 1960, AM Holt, translating Gottfried Keller, Green Henry, Calder Publications 2010, p. 456:

     I sat down on the wooden side of a mill-dam and thought over the past night and the strange adventure in the entrance-hall of Agnes' house.

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