sb. [f. TREAD v. + MILL sb.1] A horizontal cylinder made to revolve by the weight of persons treading on boards arranged as equidistant steps around its periphery. Formerly in use as an instrument of prison discipline.
1822. (title) Description of the Tread Mill invented by Mr. William Cubitt of Ipswich, for the Employment of Prisoners.
1822. Jackson’s Oxford Jrnl., 1 June, 4/1. A tread mill is nearly completed in the new county gaol, at Guildford, which will employ 40 prisoners, and is so constructed, that the different classes are separated while at work.
1824. Syd. Smith, Wks. (1859), II. 36/1. The labour of the tread-mill is irksome, dull, monotonous, and disgusting to the last degree.
1836. Gen. P. Thompson, Exerc. (1842), IV. 107. Religious observances of other people … forced upon us with a faggot or a treadmill.
1886. J. K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts, xii. 139. Too much getting up and down stairs … puts one unpleasantly in mind of the tread-mill.
transf. and fig. 1827. Scott, Chron. Canongate, i. A kind of mental tread-mill, where you are perpetually climbing, but can never rise an inch.
1862. H. Aïdé, Carr of Carrlyon, I. 262. A return to the treadmill of London society.
1897. G. Allen, Typewriter Girl, xv. The squirrel who turns the unceasing treadmill of his cage.
1905. Lyall, Life Mrq. Dufferin, II. v. 173. He found himself again on the official treadmill.
attrib. 1849. E. B. Eastwick, Dry Leaves, 5. There is no winding or sloping here…. No! all is fair treadmill work.
1885. C. Harrison, in Harper’s Mag., March, 548/1. Back again at the tread-mill round of business.
Hence Treadmill v., intr. to labor on or as on the treadmill.
1825. George Hort, in Times, 22 July, 3/3. Tell my fellow-workers outside, that I care not for six weeks’ nor six months’ treadmilling; I am prepared to sacrifice even my life in their cause.
1899. Westm. Gaz., 18 Nov., 3/2. My feet … slipped on the pedal till I was treadmilling clumsily with the middle instead of the ball of the foot.
1902. Messenger (N.S.W.), 5 Dec., 253. The … prison discipline of past days, in which treadmilling was the only work prisoners were permitted to do.
