English

Noun

pile ‎(plural piles)

1. A mass of things heaped together; a heap.
   • 1889, H. Rider Haggard, Cleopatra, Book II: The Fall of Harmachis, ISBN 1555211224, Chapter XI:

     I climbed through, and, standing on a pile of stones, lifted and dragged Cleopatra after me.

2. (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.

   • 2011 December 29, Keith Jackson, “SPL: Celtic 1 Rangers 0”, in Daily Record:

     And the moment it thumped into the net, Celtic’s march back to the top of the SPL pile also seemed unstoppable.

3. A mass formed in layers.

   a pile of shot

4. A funeral pile; a pyre.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Dryden to this entry?)

5. A large building, or mass of buildings.
   • 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 […]

   • 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 […]

6. 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.
7. A vertical series of alternate disks of two dissimilar metals, as copper and zinc, laid up with disks of cloth or paper moistened with acid water between them, for producing a current of electricity; — commonly called Volta’s pile, voltaic pile, or galvanic pile.
   • 1893, Benjamin Park, The Voltaic Cell: Its Construction and Its Capacity, page 14:

     The word "pile" is used specifically to mean the column of superposed electrodes, such as that of Volta or Zamboni.

8. (obsolete) The reverse (or tails) of a coin.
9. (figuratively) A list or league
   • 2012 September 20, Shaun Edwards, “Bent double and lungs burning – how Harlequins train for trophies”, in The Guardian (online):

     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.

Synonyms

• See also Wikisaurus:lot

Translations

Verb

pile ‎(third-person singular simple present piles, present participle piling, simple past and past participle piled)

1. (transitive) To lay or throw into a pile or heap; to heap up; to collect into a mass; to accumulate; to amass; — often with up; as, to pile up wood.
2. (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.‎

3. (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.

4. (transitive) (of vehicles) To create a hold-up.
5. (transitive, military) To place (guns, muskets, etc.) together in threes so that they can stand upright, supporting each other.

Translations

Related terms

Etymology 2

From Old English pīl, from Latin pīlum ‎(“heavy javelin”). Cognate with Dutch pijl, German Pfeil.

Noun

pile ‎(plural piles)

1. (obsolete) A dart; an arrow.
2. The head of an arrow or spear.
3. 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.

4. (heraldry) One of the ordinaries or subordinaries having the form of a wedge, usually placed palewise, with the broadest end uppermost.

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

pile ‎(third-person singular simple present piles, present participle piling, simple past and past participle piled)

1. (transitive) To drive piles into; to fill with piles; to strengthen with piles.

Translations

Etymology 3

Apparently from Late Latin pilus.

Noun

pile ‎(plural piles)

1. (chiefly in the plural) A hemorrhoid.

Translations

Etymology 4

Partly from Anglo-Norman pil (a variant of peil, poil ‎(“hair”)) and partly from its source, Latin pilus ‎(“hair”).

Noun

pile ‎(plural piles)

1. Hair, especially when very fine or short; the fine underfur of certain animals. (Formerly countable, now treated as a collective singular.)
2. The raised hairs, loops or strands of a fabric; the nap of a cloth.
   • William Cowper

     Velvet soft, or plush with shaggy pile.

Translations

Anagrams

• plie, plié

Danish

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /piːlə/, [ˈpʰiːlə]

Noun

pile c

1. plural indefinite of pil

French

Etymology

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/

Noun

pile f ‎(plural piles)

1. heap, stack (as in pile de cartons)
2. pillar
3. battery (as in pile électrique)
4. tails (of a coin; mainly used in pile ou face, "heads or tails")
5. (heraldry) pile

Descendants

• Khmer: ពិល ‎(pɨl)
• Rade: pil
• Turkish: pil
• Vietnamese: pin

Adverb

pile

1. (colloquial) just, exactly
2. (colloquial) dead (of stopping etc.); on the dot, sharp (of time), smack

Anagrams

• plie, plié

Friulian

Etymology 1

From Latin pīla ‎(“mortar”).

Noun

pile f ‎(plural pilis)

1. basin
2. mortar (vessel used to grind things)

Synonyms

• (basin): vâs
• (mortar): mortâr

Etymology 2

From Latin pīla ‎(“pillar”).

Noun

pile f ‎(plural pilis)

1. pile (architecture)

Italian

Noun

pile m ‎(invariable)

1. fleece (all senses)

Noun

pile f

1. plural of pila

Anagrams

• peli

Latin

Noun

pile

1. vocative singular of pilus

Latvian

Noun

pile f (5th declension)

1. drip

   Es pievienoju vaniļas ekstrakta pili savam karstajam kakao.‎

   I put a drip of vanilla extract in my hot cocoa.

2. dribble (a small amount of a liquid)
3. drop

   Maisījumam pievienot trīs eļļas piles.‎

   Put three drops of oil into the mixture.

Declension

Polish

Noun

pile f

1. dative singular of piła
2. locative singular of piła

Portuguese

Verb

pile

1. first-person singular (eu) present subjunctive of pilar
2. third-person singular (ele and ela, also used with você and others) present subjunctive of pilar
3. third-person singular (você) affirmative imperative of pilar
4. third-person singular (você) negative imperative of pilar

Serbo-Croatian

Etymology

From Proto-Slavic *pilę.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /pîle/
• Hyphenation: pi‧le

Noun

pȉle n ‎(Cyrillic spelling пи̏ле)

1. chick

Declension

Spanish

Verb

pile

1. First-person singular (yo) present subjunctive form of pilar.
2. Formal second-person singular (usted) present subjunctive form of pilar.
3. Third-person singular (él, ella, also used with usted^?) present subjunctive form of pilar.