A mill pond (or millpond) is a body of water used as a reservoir for a water-powered mill. Mill ponds were often created through the construction of a mill dam across a waterway. In many places, the common proper name Mill Pond name has remained even though the mill has long since gone. It may be fed by a man-made stream, known by several terms including leat and mill stream.
The term mill pond is often used colloquially to refer to a very flat body of water. Witnesses of the loss of RMS Titanic reported that the sea was "like a mill pond".
Famous quotes containing the words mill and/or pond:
“Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds your stuff to any degree of fineness; but, nevertheless, what you get out depends on what you put in; and as the grandest mill in the world will not extract wheat flour from peascods, so pages of formulae will not get a definite result out of loose data.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895)
“I am no more lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden Pond itself. What company has that lonely lake, I pray?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)