pile

• (UK) IPA^(key): /paɪl/

• Audio (US)

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• Rhymes: -aɪl

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

pile (plural piles)

1. 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.

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.
   • (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 […]

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 (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.

8. An atomic pile; an early form of nuclear reactor.
9. (obsolete) The reverse (or tails) of a coin.
10. (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.

• See also Thesaurus:lot

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Apparently from Late Latin pilus.

pile (plural piles)

1. (usually in the plural) A hemorrhoid.

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

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.
   • William Cowper

     Velvet soft, or plush with shaggy pile.

• Lipe, Peil, Piel, plie, plié

• IPA^(key): /piːlə/, [ˈpʰiːlə]

pile c

1. plural indefinite of pil

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.

• IPA^(key): /pil/

• Audio (Paris)

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• Audio

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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

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

pile

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

• “pile” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

• plie, plié

From Latin pīla (“mortar”).

pile f (plural pilis)

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

• (basin): vâs
• (mortar): mortâr

From Latin pīla (“pillar”).

pile f (plural pilis)

1. pile (architecture)

pile m (invariable)

1. fleece (all senses)

pile f

1. plural of pila

• peli

pile

1. vocative singular of pilus

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.

• IPA^(key): /ˈpʲilɛ/, [ˈpʲilə]

pile

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

• IPA^(key): /ˈpʲi.lɛ/

pile f

1. dative and locative singular of piła

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

From Proto-Slavic *pilę.

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

pȉle n (Cyrillic spelling пи̏ле)

1. chick

• kokoš
• pevac
• pileći gulaš

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.