APAD: Tilting at windmills

Meaning:

    To 'tilt at windmills' is to attack imaginary enemies.

 

Background:

   Tilting is jousting. The expression 'tilting at windmills' derives from

   Cervantes' Don Quixote - first published in 1604, under the title The

   Ingenious Knight of La Mancha.

 

   The novel recounts the exploits of would-be knight `Don Quixote' and his

   loyal servant Sancho Panza who propose to fight injustice through chivalry.

   It is considered one of the major literary masterpieces and remains a best

   seller in numerous translations.

 

   In the book, which also gives us the adjective quixotic (striving for

   visionary ideals), the eponymous hero imagines himself to be fighting giants

   when he attacks windmills.

 

   ...

   The first figurative references to tilting at windmills, that is one where no

   jousting took place, came in the 17th century. John Cleveland published The

   character of a London diurnall in 1644 (a diurnall was, as you might expect,

   part-way between a diary or journal):

 

     "The Quixotes of this Age fight with the Wind-mills of their owne Heads."

 

   The full form of the phrase isn't used until towards the end of the 19th

   century; for example, in The New York Times, April 1870:

 

     "They [Western Republicans] have not thus far had sufficient of an

     organization behind them to make their opposition to the Committee's bill

     anything more than tilting at windmills."

 

- www.phrases.org.uk [edited]

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Two thoughts exist in BJJ practitioners about the art's purpose: self-defense

vs. competition. Old-school folks like Royce Gracie, the three-time UFC

champion, called modern competitions a tag game. On the other hand, today's

IBJJF champs might claim that jiu-jitsu has grown by leaps and bounds since

its debut in the 90's and dismiss certain moves as dated drills of tilting

at windmills, falling hopelessly behind the state of the art.