pile
English
[edit]Pronunciation
[edit]Etymology 1
[edit]From Middle English pyle, from Old French pile, from Latin pīla (“pillar, pier”).
Noun
[edit]pile (plural piles)
- 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.
- (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.
- 1717, Samuel Croxall, “Book XIII. [The Funeral of Memnon.]”, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Fifteen Books. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, 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: [...]
- (slang) A large amount of money.
- Synonyms: bundle, (both informal) mint, (colloquial) small fortune
- He made a pile from that invention of his.
- 1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 192:
- When they are at work they live most frugally, denying themselves every comfort and luxury till they have made a "pile."
- A large building, or mass of buildings.
- 1817 December 31 (indicated as 1818), [Walter Scott], chapter VI, in Rob Roy. […], volume II, Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co. […]; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, →OCLC, page 124:
- 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:
- 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.
- 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.
- (architecture, civil engineering) A beam, pole, or pillar, driven completely into the ground, usually as one of a group that constitutes a foundation.
- Hyponyms: friction pile, bearing pile, end bearing pile
- Coordinate terms: pier, stilt
- An atomic pile; an early form of nuclear reactor.
- (obsolete) The reverse (or tails) of a coin.
- 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
[edit]- See also Thesaurus:lot
Derived terms
[edit]Descendants
[edit]- → Hawaiian: paila
Translations
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- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Verb
[edit]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.
- We piled the camel with our loads.
- 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.
- (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.
- (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.
- (intransitive) To form a pile or heap.
- Synonyms: accumulate, pile up
- Junk piled on the floor as we searched the attic for the old photograph albums.
Synonyms
[edit]- (lay or throw into a pile): heap, pile up; see also Thesaurus:pile up
Derived terms
[edit]Translations
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Related terms
[edit]Etymology 2
[edit]From Middle English pile, from Old English pīl, from Latin pīlum (“heavy javelin”). Cognate with Dutch pijl, German Pfeil. Doublet of pilum.
Noun
[edit]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[5], 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.
- (heraldry) One of the ordinaries or subordinaries having the form of a wedge, usually placed palewise, with the broadest end uppermost.
Derived terms
[edit]Translations
[edit]
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Verb
[edit]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
[edit]Etymology 3
[edit]Apparently from Late Latin pilus.
Noun
[edit]pile (plural piles)
- (usually in the plural) A hemorrhoid.
Translations
[edit]Etymology 4
[edit]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
[edit]pile (countable and uncountable, plural piles)
- Hair, especially when very fine or short; the fine underfur of certain animals. (Formerly countable, now treated as a collective singular.)
- 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.
Derived terms
[edit]Translations
[edit]Verb
[edit]pile (third-person singular simple present piles, present participle piling, simple past and past participle piled)
- (transitive) To give a pile to; to make shaggy.
Anagrams
[edit]Danish
[edit]Pronunciation
[edit]Noun
[edit]pile c
- indefinite plural of pil
French
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Inherited 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
[edit]Noun
[edit]pile f (plural piles)
- heap, stack
- pile de cartons ― stack of cardboard boxes
- pillar
- battery
- pile électrique ― electric battery
- tails
- pile ou face ― heads or tails
- (heraldry) pile
Derived terms
[edit]Descendants
[edit]- → English: pile
- → Haitian Creole: anpil
- → Khmer: ពិល (pɨl)
- → Malagasy: pila
- → Rade: pil
- → Turkish: pil (“battery”)
- → Vietnamese: pin
Adverb
[edit]pile
- (colloquial) just, exactly
- (colloquial) dead (of stopping etc.); on the dot, sharp (of time), smack
Derived terms
[edit]Further reading
[edit]- “pile”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.
Anagrams
[edit]Friulian
[edit]Etymology 1
[edit]Noun
[edit]pile f (plural pilis)
Synonyms
[edit]Etymology 2
[edit]Noun
[edit]pile f (plural pilis)
- pile (architecture)
Italian
[edit]Pronunciation
[edit]Etymology 1
[edit]Pseudo-anglicism, from English pile (textile).
Noun
[edit]pile m (invariable)
Etymology 2
[edit]See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.
Noun
[edit]pile f
Anagrams
[edit]Ladino
[edit]Alternative forms
[edit]Pronunciation
[edit]Noun
[edit]pile f (Latin spelling, plural piles)
- Aki Yerushalayim and French orthography spelling of pila used in Kosovo, North Macedonia, Old Yishuv of Jerusalem, West Bulgaria and Ruse.
Latin
[edit]Noun
[edit]pile
Latvian
[edit]Noun
[edit]pile f (5th declension)
- drip
- Es pievienoju vaniļas ekstrakta pili savam karstajam kakao.
- I put a drip of vanilla extract in my hot cocoa.
- dribble (a small amount of a liquid)
- drop
- Maisījumam pievienot trīs eļļas piles.
- Put three drops of oil into the mixture.
Declension
[edit]Lower Sorbian
[edit]Pronunciation
[edit]Noun
[edit]pile
- inflection of piła:
Middle English
[edit]Noun
[edit]pile
- Alternative form of pilwe
Polish
[edit]Pronunciation
[edit]Noun
[edit]pile f
Portuguese
[edit]Verb
[edit]pile
- inflection of pilar:
Serbo-Croatian
[edit]Etymology 1
[edit]Inherited from Proto-Slavic *pilę (“chick”).[1]
Pronunciation
[edit]Noun
[edit]pȉle n (Cyrillic spelling пи̏ле)
Declension
[edit]Related terms
[edit]See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ Matasović, Ranko (2021) “pȉle”, in Dubravka Ivšić Majić, Tijmen Pronk, editors, Etimološki rječnik hrvatskoga jezika [Etymological dictionary of the Croatian language] (in Serbo-Croatian), volumes II: O—Ž, Zagreb: Institut za hrvatski jezik i jezikoslovlje, page 123
Etymology 2
[edit]See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.
Verb
[edit]pile (Cyrillic spelling пиле)
Spanish
[edit]Verb
[edit]pile
- inflection of pilar:
Yola
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From Middle English pyle, from Old French pile, from Latin pīla.
Pronunciation
[edit]Noun
[edit]pile
- pile
- 1867, “A YOLA ZONG”, in SONGS, ETC. IN THE DIALECT OF FORTH AND BARGY, number 9, page 88:
- A clugercheen gother: all, ing pile an in heep,
- A crowd gathered up: all, in pile and in heap,
References
[edit]- Jacob Poole (d. 1827) (before 1828) 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, published 1867, page 88
- English 1-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio links
- Rhymes:English/aɪl
- Rhymes:English/aɪl/1 syllable
- English terms derived from Proto-Indo-European
- English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *peys-
- English terms inherited from Middle English
- English terms derived from Middle English
- English terms derived from Old French
- English terms derived from Latin
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English countable nouns
- English terms with quotations
- English informal terms
- English terms with usage examples
- English slang
- en:Architecture
- English terms with obsolete senses
- English verbs
- English transitive verbs
- en:Military
- English intransitive verbs
- English terms inherited from Old English
- English terms derived from Old English
- English doublets
- en:Heraldic charges
- English terms derived from Late Latin
- English terms derived from Anglo-Norman
- English uncountable nouns
- Danish terms with IPA pronunciation
- Danish non-lemma forms
- Danish noun forms
- French terms inherited from Old French
- French terms derived from Old French
- French terms inherited from Latin
- French terms derived from Latin
- French terms borrowed from Italian
- French terms derived from Italian
- French 1-syllable words
- French terms with IPA pronunciation
- French terms with audio links
- French lemmas
- French nouns
- French countable nouns
- French feminine nouns
- French terms with usage examples
- fr:Heraldic charges
- French adverbs
- French colloquialisms
- Friulian terms inherited from Latin
- Friulian terms derived from Latin
- Friulian lemmas
- Friulian nouns
- Friulian feminine nouns
- Italian 2-syllable words
- Italian terms with IPA pronunciation
- Rhymes:Italian/ile
- Rhymes:Italian/ile/2 syllables
- Italian terms borrowed from English
- Italian terms derived from English
- Italian lemmas
- Italian nouns
- Italian indeclinable nouns
- Italian countable nouns
- Italian masculine nouns
- Italian non-lemma forms
- Italian noun forms
- Ladino terms with IPA pronunciation
- Ladino lemmas
- Ladino nouns
- Ladino nouns in Latin script
- Ladino feminine nouns
- Ladino nouns in Aki Yerushalayim orthography
- Ladino nouns in French orthography
- Latin non-lemma forms
- Latin noun forms
- Latvian lemmas
- Latvian nouns
- Latvian feminine nouns
- Latvian terms with usage examples
- Latvian fifth declension nouns
- Latvian noun forms
- Lower Sorbian terms with IPA pronunciation
- Lower Sorbian non-lemma forms
- Lower Sorbian noun forms
- Middle English lemmas
- Middle English nouns
- Polish 2-syllable words
- Polish terms with IPA pronunciation
- Rhymes:Polish/ilɛ
- Rhymes:Polish/ilɛ/2 syllables
- Polish terms with homophones
- Polish non-lemma forms
- Polish noun forms
- Portuguese non-lemma forms
- Portuguese verb forms
- Serbo-Croatian terms inherited from Proto-Slavic
- Serbo-Croatian terms derived from Proto-Slavic
- Serbo-Croatian terms with IPA pronunciation
- Serbo-Croatian lemmas
- Serbo-Croatian nouns
- Serbo-Croatian neuter nouns
- Serbo-Croatian non-lemma forms
- Serbo-Croatian verb forms
- sh:Baby animals
- sh:Birds
- Spanish non-lemma forms
- Spanish verb forms
- Yola terms inherited from Middle English
- Yola terms derived from Middle English
- Yola terms derived from Old French
- Yola terms derived from Latin
- Yola terms with IPA pronunciation
- Yola terms with homophones
- Yola lemmas
- Yola nouns
- Yola terms with quotations