English

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Etymology

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(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

Noun

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grist to the mill (uncountable)

  1. (idiomatic, chiefly UK) Alternative form of grist for the mill
    • 1875, Anthony Trollope, chapter 58, in The Way We Live Now, London: Chapman and Hall, []:
      What evil will not a rival say to stop the flow of grist to the mill of the hated one?
    • 1999, Simon Blackburn, Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy (Oxford University Press paperback, →ISBN, ch. 7 section 6: "Kant’s Revolution", pp. 258–259:
      This might all seem grist to Berkeley’s mill. Berkeley himself knew that we interpret our experience in spatio-temporal, objective terms. But he thought we had to ‘speak with the vulgar but think with the learned’: in other words, learn to regard that interpretation as a kind of façon de parler, rather than the description of a real, independent, objective world.

Usage notes

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