pile
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /paɪl/
rhymes: -aɪl
Forms: form: piles
Etymology: From Middle English pyle, from Old French pile, from Latin pīla (“pillar, pier”).
Senses: examples: text: I climbed through, and, standing on a pile of stones, lifted and dragged Cleopatra after me.
ref: 1889, H. Rider Haggard, Cleopatra^(http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Cleopatra_(Haggard)/Book_II/Chapter_XI), Book II: The Fall of Harmachis, →ISBN, Chapter XI:
glosses: A mass of things heaped together; a heap.
examples: text: When we were looking for a new housemate, we put the nice woman on the "maybe" pile, and the annoying guy on the "no" pile
glosses: A group or list of related items up for consideration, especially in some kind of selection process.
examples: text: a pile of shot
glosses: A mass formed in layers.
examples: text: Jove with a Nod, comply'd with her Deſire; / Around the Body flam'd the Funeral Fire; / The Pile decreas'd that lately ſeem'd ſo high, / And Sheets of Smoak roll'd upward to the Sky: [...]
ref: 1717, Samuel Croxall, “Book XIII. [The Funeral of Memnon.]”, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Fifteen Books. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, page 463:
glosses: A funeral pile; a pyre.
examples: text: He made a pile from that invention of his.
text: When they are at work they live most frugally, denying themselves every comfort and luxury till they have made a "pile."
ref: 1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 192:
synonyms: word: bundle
word: mint
word: small fortune
glosses: A large amount of money.
examples: text: The pile is of a gloomy and massive, rather than of an elegant, style of Gothic architecture; […]
ref: 1817 December 31 (indicated as 1818), [Walter Scott], chapter VI, in Rob Roy. […], volume II, Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co. […]; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, →OCLC, page 124:
text: The pile o'erlooked the town and drew the fight.
ref: 1697, Virgil, “(please specify the book number)”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC:
text: It was dark when the four-wheeled cab wherein he had brought Avice from the station stood at the entrance to the pile of flats of which Pierston occupied one floor[…]
ref: 1892, Thomas Hardy, The Well-Beloved:
text: He [Winston Churchill] was born at Blenheim Palace, that Oxfordshire pile built for his ancestor John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, who also knew a thing or two about warfare.
ref: 2021 September 22, Stephen Roberts, “The writings on the wall...”, in RAIL, number 940, page 75:
glosses: A large building, or mass of buildings.
glosses: A bundle of pieces of wrought iron to be worked over into bars or other shapes by rolling or hammering at a welding heat; a fagot.
examples: text: The word "pile" is used specifically to mean the column of superposed electrodes, such as that of Volta or Zamboni.
ref: 1893, Benjamin Park, The Voltaic Cell: Its Construction and Its Capacity, page 14:
glosses: A vertical series of alternate disks of two dissimilar metals (especially copper and zinc), laid up with disks of cloth or paper moistened with acid water between them, for producing a current of electricity; a voltaic pile, or galvanic pile.
topics: architecture
civil-engineering
engineering
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
coordinate_terms: pier
stilt#Noun
glosses: A beam, pole, or pillar, driven completely into the ground, usually as one of a group that constitutes a foundation.
glosses: An atomic pile; an early form of nuclear reactor.
glosses: The reverse (or tails) of a coin.
examples: text: And the moment it thumped into the net, Celtic’s march back to the top of the SPL pile also seemed unstoppable.
ref: 2011 December 29, Keith Jackson, “SPL: Celtic 1 Rangers 0”, in Daily Record:
text: Watch Harlequins train and you get some idea of why they are back on top of the pile going into Saturday's rerun of last season's grand final against Leicester.
ref: 2012 September 20, Shaun Edwards, “Bent double and lungs burning – how Harlequins train for trophies”, in The Guardian (online):
glosses: A list or league
Derived terms: atomic pile
at the bottom of the pile
at the top of the pile
biopile
book piles
Bunsen pile
cross and pile
death pile
dogpile
dustpile
facepile
funeral pile
gangpile
go the whole pile
helical pile
hook-and-pile fastener
junkpile
leafpile
make a pile
micropile
mispile
monopile
muscular pile
nuclear pile
overpile
pig pile
pile bridge
piledrive
piledriver
pile driver
pile-driving
pile dwelling
pileless
pilement
pile of crap
pile of cunt
pile of poo
pile of shit
piler
pile shoe
pilewise
pilework
pileworm
pily
polypile
puppy pile
repile
rockpile
rubble pile
sandpile
shagpile
shitpile
slash pile
slushpile
slush pile
snowpile
stockpile
subpile
three-pile
turdpile
unpile
uppile
wastepile
woodpile
Zamboni pile