pile
English
Pronunciation
- (UK) IPA(key): /paɪl/
Audio (US) (file) - Rhymes: -aɪl
Etymology 1
Borrowed from Middle French pile, pille, from Latin pīla (“pillar, pier”).
Noun
pile (plural piles)
- A mass of things heaped together; a heap.
- 1889, H. Rider Haggard, Cleopatra, Book II: The Fall of Harmachis, →ISBN, Chapter XI:
- I climbed through, and, standing on a pile of stones, lifted and dragged Cleopatra after me.
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- (figuratively, informal) A group or list of related items up for consideration, especially in some kind of selection process.
- 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.
- A mass formed in layers.
- a pile of shot
- A funeral pile; a pyre.
- (Can we find and add a quotation of Dryden to this entry?)
- A large building, or mass of buildings.
- (Can we date this quote by Dryden?)
- The pile o'erlooked the town and drew the fight.
- 1817, Walter Scott, Rob Roy, II.2:
- The pile is of a gloomy and massive, rather than of an elegant, style of Gothic architecture […]
- (Can we date this quote by Thomas Hardy?), The Well-Beloved
- 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 […]
- (Can we date this quote by Dryden?)
- 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.
- 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.
- An atomic pile; an early form of nuclear reactor.
- (obsolete) The reverse (or tails) of a coin.
- (figuratively) A list or league
Synonyms
- See also Thesaurus:lot
Translations
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- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#Translations.
Verb
pile (third-person singular simple present piles, present participle piling, simple past and past participle piled)
- (transitive, often used with the preposition "up") To lay or throw into a pile or heap; to heap up; to collect into a mass; to accumulate
- They were piling up wood on the wheelbarrow.
- (transitive) To cover with heaps; or in great abundance; to fill or overfill; to load.
- 2013 June 22, “Engineers of a different kind”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8841, page 70:
- 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.
- We piled the camel with our loads.
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- (transitive) To add something to a great number.
- 2010 December 28, Owen Phillips, “Sunderland 0-2 Blackpool”, in BBC:
- 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.
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- (transitive) (of vehicles) To create a hold-up.
- (transitive, military) To place (guns, muskets, etc.) together in threes so that they can stand upright, supporting each other.
Synonyms
- (lay or throw into a pile): heap, pile up; see also Thesaurus:pile up
Translations
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Related terms
- funeral pile
- muscular pile
- pile bridge
- pile cap
Etymology 2
From Old English pīl, from Latin pīlum (“heavy javelin”). Cognate with Dutch pijl, German Pfeil.
Noun
pile (plural piles)
- (obsolete) A dart; an arrow.
- The head of an arrow or spear.
- A large stake, or piece of pointed timber, steel etc., driven into the earth or sea-bed for the support of a building, a pier, or other superstructure, or to form a cofferdam, etc.
- 1719, Daniel Defoe, The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, 10th edition edition, published 1864, Chapter VI, page 68:
- All this time I worked very hard [...] and it is scarce credible what inexpressible labour everything was done with, especially the bringing piles out of the woods and driving them into the ground; for I made them much bigger than I needed to have done.
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- (heraldry) One of the ordinaries or subordinaries having the form of a wedge, usually placed palewise, with the broadest end uppermost.
Derived terms
- pile bridge
- pile cap
- pile driver
- pile dwelling
- pile engine
- pile plank
- pneumatic pile
- screw pile
Translations
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Verb
pile (third-person singular simple present piles, present participle piling, simple past and past participle piled)
- (transitive) To drive piles into; to fill with piles; to strengthen with piles.
Translations
Etymology 3
Apparently from Late Latin pilus.
Translations
Etymology 4
Partly from Anglo-Norman pil (a variant of peil, poil (“hair”)) and partly from its source, Latin pilus (“hair”).
Noun
pile (countable and uncountable, plural piles)
French
Etymology
From Old French, from Latin pīla (through Italian for the battery sense). The tail of a coin sense is probably derived from previous senses, but it's not known for sure.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /pil/
Audio (Paris) (file) Audio (file)
Noun
pile f (plural piles)
Adverb
pile
Further reading
- “pile” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).
Friulian
Latin
Latvian
Noun
pile f (5th declension)
Declension
singular (vienskaitlis) | plural (daudzskaitlis) | |
---|---|---|
nominative (nominatīvs) | pile | piles |
accusative (akuzatīvs) | pili | piles |
genitive (ģenitīvs) | piles | piļu |
dative (datīvs) | pilei | pilēm |
instrumental (instrumentālis) | pili | pilēm |
locative (lokatīvs) | pilē | pilēs |
vocative (vokatīvs) | pile | piles |
Lower Sorbian
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ˈpʲilɛ/, [ˈpʲilə]
Portuguese
Serbo-Croatian
Etymology
From Proto-Slavic *pilę.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /pîle/
- Hyphenation: pi‧le
Declension
singular | plural | |
---|---|---|
nominative | pile | pilići |
genitive | pileta | pilića |
dative | piletu | pilićima |
accusative | pile | piliće |
vocative | pile | pilići |
locative | piletu | pilićima |
instrumental | piletom | pilićima |