pile definition

English pile definition

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /paɪl/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -aɪl

Etymology 1

From Middle English pyle, from Old French pile, from Latin pīla (“pillar, pier”).

Noun

pile (plural piles)

1. A mass of things heaped together; a heap.
   • 1889, H. Rider Haggard, Cleopatra‎^[1], 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.

2. (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

3. A mass formed in layers.

   a pile of shot

4. A funeral pile; a pyre.
   • 1717, Samuel Croxall, “Book XIII. [The Funeral of Memnon.]”, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Fifteen Books. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], OCLC 731548838, page 463:

     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: [...]

5. (slang) A large amount of money.

   Synonyms: bundle, (both informal) mint, (colloquial) small fortune

   He made a pile from that invention of his.

6. A large building, or mass of buildings.
   • 1817 December 31 (indicated as 1818), [Walter Scott], chapter 2, in Rob Roy. […], volume II, Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co. […]; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, OCLC 82790126:

     The pile is of a gloomy and massive, rather than of an elegant, style of Gothic architecture […]

   • 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 403869432:

     The pile o'erlooked the town and drew the fight.

   • 1892, 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 […]

   • 2021 September 22, Stephen Roberts, “The writings on the wall...”, in RAIL, number 940, page 75:

     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.

7. 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.
8. 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.
   • 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.

9. (architecture, civil engineering) A beam, pole, or pillar, driven completely into the ground.

   Hyponyms: friction pile, bearing pile, end bearing pile

   Coordinate terms: pile driver, pile foundation

10. An atomic pile; an early form of nuclear reactor.
11. (obsolete) The reverse (or tails) of a coin.
12. A list or league
    • 2012 September 20, Shaun Edwards, “Bent double and lungs burning – how Harlequins train for trophies”, in The Guardian (online)‎^[2]:

      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.

    • 2011 December 29, Keith Jackson, “SPL: Celtic 1 Rangers 0”, in Daily Record‎^[3]:

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

Synonyms

• See also Thesaurus:lot

Translations

Verb

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

1. (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.

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.

Synonyms

• (lay or throw into a pile): heap, pile up; see also Thesaurus:pile up

Translations

Related terms

Etymology 2

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

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^[4], 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. (usually in the plural) A hemorrhoid.

Translations

Etymology 4

From Middle English pile, partly from Anglo-Norman pil (a variant of peil, poil (“hair”)) and partly from its source, Latin pilus (“hair”). Doublet of pilus.

Noun

pile (countable and uncountable, 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.
   • 1785, William Cowper, The Task

     Velvet soft, or plush with shaggy pile.

Translations

Verb

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

1. (transitive) To give a pile to; to make shaggy.

Anagrams

• Lipe, Peil, Piel, plie, plié

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Danish pile definition

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /piːlə/, [ˈpʰiːlə]

Noun

pile c

1. indefinite plural of pil

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French pile definition

Etymology

From Old French, from Latin pīla (through Italian pila 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)

1. heap, stack

   pile de cartons ― stack of cardboard boxes

2. pillar
3. battery

   pile électrique ― electric battery

4. tails

   pile ou face ― heads or tails

5. (heraldry) pile

Derived terms

• pile ou face

Descendants

• → English: pile
• → Haitian Creole: anpil
• → Khmer: ពិល (pɨl)
• → Malagasy: pila
• → 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

Derived terms

• pile-poil

Further reading

• “pile”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Anagrams

• plie, plié

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Friulian pile definition

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)

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Italian pile definition

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈpi.le/
• Rhymes: -ile
• Hyphenation: pì‧le

Etymology 1

Pseudo-anglicism, from English pile (textile).

Noun

pile m (invariable)

1. polar fleece, fleece

Etymology 2

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

Noun

pile f

1. plural of pila

Anagrams

• peli, plié

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Latin pile definition

Noun

pile

1. vocative singular of pilus

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Latvian pile definition

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

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Lower Sorbian pile definition

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈpʲilɛ/, [ˈpʲilə]

Noun

pile

1. inflection of piła:
   1. dative/locative singular
   2. nominative/accusative dual

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Middle English pile definition

Noun

pile

1. Alternative form of pilwe

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Polish pile definition

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈpi.lɛ/
• Rhymes: -ilɛ
• Syllabification: pi‧le
• Homophone: pilę

Noun

pile f

1. dative/locative singular of piła

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Portuguese pile definition

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

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Serbo-Croatian pile definition

Etymology 1

From Proto-Slavic *pilę (“chick”); but also a *pisklę is reconstructed related to *piskati (“to utter shrilly”).

Pronunciation

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

Noun

pȉle n (Cyrillic spelling пи̏ле)

1. chick

Declension

See also

• pilad
• kokoš
• pijevac / pevac
• pileći gulaš

Etymology 2

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

Verb

pile (Cyrillic spelling пиле)

1. third-person plural present of piliti

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Spanish pile definition

Verb

pile

1. inflection of pilar:
   1. first-person singular present subjunctive
   2. third-person singular present subjunctive
   3. third-person singular imperative

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Yola pile definition

Etymology

From Middle English pyle, from Old French pile, from Latin pīla.

Noun

pile

1. pile
   • 1867, “A YOLA ZONG”, in SONGS, ETC. IN THE DIALECT OF FORTH AND BARGY, number 9:

     A clugercheen gother: all, ing pile an in heep,

     A crowd gathered up: all, in pile and in heap,

References

• Jacob Poole (1867), William Barnes, editor, A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, page 88