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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Millwright

Millwright \Mill"wright`\, n. A mechanic whose occupation is to build mills, or to set up their machinery.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
millwright

late 15c., from mill (n.1) + wright.

Wiktionary
millwright

n. a person who designed, erected and built mills and milling machinery

WordNet
millwright

n. a workman who designs or erects mills and milling machinery

Wikipedia
Millwright

A millwright is a craftsman or tradesman who installs, dismantles, repairs, reassembles, and moves machinery in factories, power plants, and construction sites.

As the name suggests, the original function of a millwright was the construction of flour mills, sawmills, paper mills and fulling mills powered by water or wind, mostly of wood with a limited number of metal parts. Since both of these structures originated from antiquity, millwrighting could be considered, arguably, as one of the oldest engineering trades and the forerunner of the modern mechanical engineer.

In modern usage, a millwright is engaged with the erection of machinery. This includes such tasks as leveling, aligning and installing machinery on foundations or base plates and setting, leveling and aligning electric motors or other power sources such as turbines with the equipment, which millwrights typically connect with some type of coupling.

It must be noted that the term millwright (also known as Industrial Mechanic ) is mainly used in USA, Canada and South Africa to describe members belonging to a particular trade. Other countries use different terms to describe tradesmen engaging in similar activities. Related, but distinctly different crafts, include machinists and mechanics.

Usage examples of "millwright".

After them march the guilds and trades and trainbands with flying colours: coopers, bird fanciers, millwrights, newspaper canvassers, law scriveners, masseurs, vintners, trussmakers, chimneysweeps, lard refiners, tabinet and poplin weavers, farriers, Italian warehousemen, church decorators, bootjack manufacturers, undertakers, silk mercers, lapidaries, salesmasters, corkcutters, assessors of fire losses, dyers and cleaners, export bottlers, fellmongers, ticketwriters, heraldic seal engravers, horse repository hands, bullion brokers, cricket and archery outfitters, riddlemakers, egg and potato factors, hosiers and glovers, plumbing contractors.

He was not the millwright any longer, but a wanted man, who could be hanged three times over for his crimes.

When they were sitting together of an evening, pa would tell Hardy stories of his own boyhood in his native Ireland, and how he had been apprenticed to a millwright when he was ten years old.

When I was a boy, apprenticed to a millwright, he could make me check every measurement, study every piece of lumber we used.

Kindly, confused old Rarendon was taken into the old stables behind the mill, where the dwarven millwright allowed orphans of the Starn.

He and another guard named Marvin Meriwether who had been a faller like Tom for seven years and who had worked another seven as a millwright took the 4 a.

That was already in use, and the master millwright understood what was needed in the way of converting a gristmill to a fireseed mill almost at once.

At the age of seventeen he was apprenticed to a millwright near Macclesfield, and soon after completing his apprenticeship he set up in business for himself as a wheelwright at Leek, quickly becoming known for his ingenuity and skill in repairing all kinds of machinery.

Saw Mill and Grist Mill here on the Susquehannah, near his House, and has had a Millwright to view the Spot.

The millwrights and other trades were offering a premium on emigration, to induce their hands to go away.