pile

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See also píle, pilé, pīle, and pīlē

Contents

English [edit]

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Pronunciation [edit]

Etymology 1 [edit]

Old English pīl, from Latin pīlum. Cognate with Dutch pijl, German Pfeil.

Noun [edit]

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[1], edition 10th 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.
Translations [edit]
obsolete: dart, arrow
head of an arrow or spear
stake of pointed timber, steel etc., driven into the earth
heraldry: one of the ordinaries

Verb [edit]

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 [edit]
to drive piles into

Etymology 2 [edit]

Apparently from Late Latin pilus.

Noun [edit]

pile (plural piles)

  1. (usually in plural) A hemorrhoid.
Translations [edit]
hemorrhoid — see hemorrhoid

Etymology 3 [edit]

From Middle French pile, pille, from Latin pīla (“pillar, pier”).

Noun [edit]

pile (plural piles)

  1. A mass of things heaped together; a heap.
  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”, 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; as, a pile of shot.
  4. A funeral pile; a pyre.
  5. A large building, or mass of buildings.
    • 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.
  8. (obsolete) The reverse (or tails) of a coin.
  9. (figuratively) A list or league
Synonyms [edit]
Translations [edit]
heap
group or list of related items
mass formed in layers
funeral pile — see pyre
large building, or mass of buildings
wrought iron to be worked over into bars or other shapes — see fagot
galvanic pile
obsolete: reverse of a coin — see tails
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 Help:How to check translations.
Translations to be checked

Verb [edit]

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.
    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”, 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.
Translations [edit]
to lay or throw into a pile
to overload
to add something to a great number
to create a hold-up

Related terms [edit]

Etymology 4 [edit]

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

Noun [edit]

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.
Translations [edit]
fine or short hair
nap of a cloth — see nap

Anagrams [edit]

Danish [edit]

Pronunciation [edit]

  • IPA: /piːlə/, [ˈpʰiːlə]

Noun [edit]

pile c

  1. plural indefinite of pil

French [edit]

Etymology [edit]

Latin pila (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 [edit]

Noun [edit]

pile f (plural piles)

  1. heap, stack
  2. pillar
  3. battery
  4. tails (of a coin)

Adverb [edit]

pile

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

Anagrams [edit]

Italian [edit]

Noun [edit]

pile m (invariable)

  1. fleece (all senses)

pile f

  1. Plural form of pila

Anagrams [edit]

Latin [edit]

Noun [edit]

pile

  1. vocative singular of pilus

Polish [edit]

Noun [edit]

pile f

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

Serbo-Croatian [edit]

Etymology [edit]

From Proto-Slavic *pilę.

Noun [edit]

pȉle n (Cyrillic spelling пи̏ле)

  1. chick

Declension [edit]

    declension of pile
singular plural
nominative pile pilad
genitive pileta piladi
dative piletu piladi
accusative pile pilad
vocative pile piladi
locative piletu piladi
instrumental piletom pilađu / piladi

Spanish [edit]

Verb [edit]

pile (infinitive pilar)

  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.
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