Dictionary Definition
pile
Noun
2 (often followed by `of') a large number or
amount or extent; "a batch of letters"; "a deal of trouble"; "a lot
of money"; "he made a mint on the stock market"; "it must have cost
plenty" [syn: batch,
deal, flock, good deal,
great
deal, hatful,
heap, lot, mass, mess, mickle, mint, muckle, peck, plenty, pot, quite a
little, raft, sight, slew, spate, stack, tidy sum,
wad, whole lot,
whole
slew]
3 a large sum of money (especially as pay or
profit); "she made a bundle selling real estate"; "they sank
megabucks into their new house" [syn: bundle, big bucks,
megabucks, big
money]
4 fine soft dense hair (as the fine short hair of
cattle or deer or the wool of sheep or the undercoat of certain
dogs) [syn: down]
5 battery consisting of voltaic cells arranged in
series; the earliest electric battery devised by Volta [syn:
voltaic
pile, galvanic
pile]
6 a column of wood or steel or concrete that is
driven into the ground to provide support for a structure [syn:
spile, piling, stilt]
7 the yarn (as in a rug or velvet or corduroy)
that stands up from the weave; "for uniform color and texture
tailors cut velvet with the pile running the same direction" [syn:
nap]
8 a nuclear reactor that uses controlled nuclear
fission to generate energy [syn: atomic pile,
atomic
reactor, chain
reactor]
Verb
1 arrange in stacks; "heap firewood around the
fireplace"; "stack your books up on the shelves" [syn: stack, heap]
3 place or lay as if in a pile; "The teacher
piled work on the students until the parents protested"
User Contributed Dictionary
English
Most definitions taken from the public domain
1913 US Webster’s Unabridged dictionary
Pronunciation
- Rhymes: -aɪl
Noun
pile- A hair; hence, the fiber of wool, cotton, and the like; also,
the nap when thick or heavy, as of carpeting and velvet.
- Velvet soft, or plush with shaggy pile. —Cowper
- A covering of hair or fur.
- A large stake, or piece of timber, steel section pointed and driven into the earth or drilled and cast reinforced concrete, as at the bottom of a river, or in a harbor where the ground is soft, for the support of a building, a pier, or other superstructure, or to form a cofferdam, etc.
- The head of an arrow or spear.
- One of the ordinaries or subordinaries having the form of a wedge, usually placed palewise, with the broadest end uppermost.
- A mass of things heaped together; a heap; as, a pile of stones;
a pile of wood.
- 1889, Haggard, Cleopatra:
- I climbed through, and, standing on a pile of stones, lifted and dragged Cleopatra after me. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Cleopatra_%28Haggard%29/Book_II/Chapter_XI
- 1889, Haggard, Cleopatra:
- A mass formed in layers; as, a pile of shot.
- A funeral pile; a pyre.
- A large building, or mass of buildings.
- 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, 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.
- The reverse (or tails) of a coin. (Obs)
- A hemorrhoid (usually it is in plural)
Translations
carpet
hair
pillar
- French: pile
heap
battery
- French: pile
coin
- French: pile
Verb
- To drive piles into; to fill with piles; to strengthen with piles.
- 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.
- To cover with heaps; or in great abundance; to fill or overfill; to load.
- To add something to a great number.
- (of vehicles) To create a hold up.
- A structure supported on piled foundations
Related terms
Bosnian
Noun
Croatian
Noun
Declension
French
Etymology
Latin pilaNoun
pileSerbian
Noun
Extensive Definition
Pile may refer to:
- Pile foundation, type of deep foundation
- Pile (textile), fabric with raised surface made of upright loops or strands of yarn
- Nuclear pile, early term for a nuclear reactor, typically one constructed of graphite
- Pile, an ordinary in hearaldry, a downward-pointing triangle
- Voltaic pile, first modern electric battery
- General Sir Frederick Alfred Pile, 2nd Baronet
- Pile (data structure)
Piles can refer to:
- a common name for hemorrhoids
- Piles, Valencia, municipality in Spain
pile in French: Pile
Synonyms, Antonyms and Related Words
abscess, abundance, accumulate, accumulation, agglomeration, aggregate, aggregation, amass, amassment, angina, angina pectoris, anthill, aortic insufficiency,
aortic stenosis, apoplectic stroke, architecture, arrhythmia, arteriosclerosis,
assault, assemblage, assemble, assortment, atherosclerosis, atomic
pile, atrial fibrillation, attack, auricular fibrillation,
back, backlog, bag, bags, baluster, balustrade, banister, bank, bank up, bankroll, barrel, base, batch, bed sore, beriberi heart,
bestraddle, bestride, blade, blain, bleb, blister, board, boil, bomb, boodle, bottle, box, bract, bracteole, bractlet, breeder reactor,
bricks, bristle, bristles, brush, bubo, budget, building, bulla, bundle, bunion, burden, can, canker, canker sore, capillament, carbuncle, cardiac arrest,
cardiac insufficiency, cardiac shock, cardiac stenosis, cardiac
thrombosis, carditis,
caryatid, chain
reactor, chain-reacting pile, chancre, chancroid, charge, chilblain, choke, cilium, climb on, coat, cock, cold sore, collect, collection, colonnade, column, commissariat, commissary, concentration, congenital
heart disease, congeries, conglomeration, considerable, construct, construction, cor
biloculare, cor juvenum, cor triatriatum, cornucopia, coronary, coronary
insufficiency, coronary thrombosis, cotyledon, crate, crowd in, cumulate, cumulation, dado, deal, deposit, diastolic hypertension,
die, down, drift, dump, dune, edifice, eiderdown, embankment, encased heart,
endocarditis,
enter, erection, eschar, establishment, exaggerate, exit, extrasystole, fabric, fast pile, fatty heart,
feel, felon, fester, festering, fever blister,
fibroid heart, fill,
finish, fistula, flag, flask-shaped heart, fleece, floral leaf, floss, flue, fluff, foliole, footstalk, fortune, freight, frond, frosted heart, fur, furnace, furuncle, furunculus, fuzz, gathering, get in, get into,
get on, glomeration,
glume, go aboard, go on
board, gobs, good deal,
good sum, grain, granular
texture, great deal, gumboil, hair, hairy heart, haycock, haymow, hayrick, haystack, heap, heap up, heaps, heaps of gold, heart
attack, heart block, heart condition, heart disease, heart failure,
hemorrhoids,
heterogeneous reactor, high blood pressure, hill, hoard, holdings, homogeneous reactor,
hop in, horsehair,
house, hypertension, hypertensive
heart disease, intermediate pile, inventory, involucre, involucrum, ischemic heart
disease, jack, jam in,
jumble, jump in, jump on,
kibe, knub, lade, lamina, larder, large sum, lashings, lattice, leaf, leaflet, leave, leg, lemma, lesion, ligule, lint, load, loads, loot, lot, lots, lump, mane, mass, material, materials, materiel, mess, millions, mint, mint of money, mitral
insufficiency, mitral stenosis, molehill, money, mound, mount, mountain, mow, much, munitions, myocardial
infarction, myocardial insufficiency, myocarditis, myovascular
insufficiency, nap, needle, neutron factory,
newel-post, nub, nuclear
furnace, oceans, oodles, overwhelm, ox heart, pack, pack away, pack in, packaged
house, packet, pale, palisade, palpitation, papula, papule, paralytic stroke,
paronychia,
paroxysmal tachycardia, parulis, peck, pedestal, pedicel, peduncle, peg, pelt, pericarditis, petal, petechia, picket, pier, pilaster, pile in, pile it on,
pile out, pile up, piles,
piling, pillar, pimple, pine needle, pit, plenitude, plenty, plethora, plinth, plush, plutonium reactor, pock, pocket, pole, polyp, post, pot, potful, power of money, power
reactor, power-breeder reactor, prefab, prefabrication, premature
beat, pretty penny, protuberance, provisionment, provisions, pseudoaortic
insufficiency, pubescence, pubic hair,
pulmonary insufficiency, pulmonary stenosis, pustule, pyramid, pyre, quantity, queen-post, quite a
little, radioactive waste, raft, rafts, rations, reactor, reactor pile, repertoire, repertory, rheumatic heart
disease, rick, rising, rods, roll, round heart, ruck, sack, scab, scads, sclerosis, seed leaf, sepal, setula, shaft, shag, shank, ship, shock, sight, skyscraper, slew, slews, slow pile, snowdrift, socle, soft chancre, sore, spate, spathe, spear, spile, spire, stack, stack up, stacks, staff, stake, stalk, stanchion, stand, standard, stellarator, stem, stigma, stipula, stipule, stock, stock-in-trade, stockpile, stony heart,
store, stores, stow, stroke, structure, sty, subbase, superabundance, superstructure, supplies, supply, supply on hand, suppuration, surbase, surface, surface texture,
swansdown, swelling, tachycardia, texture, thistledown, thousands, thrombosis, tidy sum,
tons, tower, treasure, treasury, tricuspid
insufficiency, tricuspid stenosis, trunk, tubercle, tumulus, turtle heart, ulcer, ulceration, upright, uranium reactor,
varicose veins, varix,
ventricular fibrillation, wad, wads, wale, wealth, weave, welt, wheal, whelk, whitlow, whole slew, windrow, woof, wool, wound