pile
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: simple
Topics: architecture
civil-engineering
engineering
government
military
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
politics
war
Etymology: From Middle English pyle, from Old French pile, from Latin pīla (“pillar, pier”).
Inflected forms:
form: piles
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: piles
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: piling
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: piled
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: piled
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: A mass of things heaped together; a heap.
pos: noun
examples: I climbed through, and, standing on a pile of stones, lifted and dragged Cleopatra after me.
gloss: A group or list of related items up for consideration, especially in some kind of selection process.
pos: noun
tags: informal
examples: 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.
gloss: A mass formed in layers.
pos: noun
examples: a pile of shot
gloss: A funeral pile; a pyre.
pos: noun
examples: 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: [...]
gloss: A large amount of money.
pos: noun
tags: slang
examples: He made a pile from that invention of his.
When they are at work they live most frugally, denying themselves every comfort and luxury till they have made a "pile."
gloss: A large building, or mass of buildings.
pos: noun
examples: The pile is of a gloomy and massive, rather than of an elegant, style of Gothic architecture; […]
The pile o'erlooked the town and drew the fight.
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[…]
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.
gloss: 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.
pos: noun
gloss: 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.
pos: noun
examples: The word "pile" is used specifically to mean the column of superposed electrodes, such as that of Volta or Zamboni.
gloss: A beam, pole, or pillar, driven completely into the ground, usually as one of a group that constitutes a foundation.
pos: noun
gloss: An atomic pile; an early form of nuclear reactor.
pos: noun
gloss: The reverse (or tails) of a coin.
pos: noun
tags: obsolete
gloss: A list or league
pos: noun
examples: And the moment it thumped into the net, Celtic’s march back to the top of the SPL pile also seemed unstoppable.
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.
gloss: To lay or throw into a pile or heap; to heap up; to collect into a mass; to accumulate
pos: verb
tags: often
transitive
examples: They were piling up wood on the wheelbarrow.
gloss: To cover with heaps; or in great abundance; to fill or overfill; to load.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: We piled the camel with our loads.
Private-equity nabobs bristle at being dubbed mere financiers. Piling debt onto companies’ balance-sheets is only a small part of what leveraged buy-outs are about, they insist. Improving the workings of the businesses they take over is just as core to their calling, if not more so. Much of their pleading is public-relations bluster.
gloss: To add something to a great number.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: But as the second half wore on, Sunderland piled forward at every opportunity and their relentless pressure looked certain to be rewarded in the closing stages.
gloss: (of vehicles) To create a hold-up.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
gloss: To place (guns, muskets, etc.) together in threes so that they can stand upright, supporting each other.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
gloss: To form a pile or heap.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: Junk piled on the floor as we searched the attic for the old photograph albums.
I darted from room to room as the see-through bagless dustbin piled high with shocking amounts of icky-poo.
Synonyms: pile up
Derived words: 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
piledrive
piledriver
pile-driving
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
pile bridge
pile driver
pile dwelling
pile in
pile it high, sell it cheap
pile on
pile on the pounds
pile out
pile Pelion on Ossa
pile up
Translations: