Noun: pile
Sample Sentences
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I climbed through, and, standing on a pile of stones, lifted and dragged Cleopatra after me. [1889, H. Rider Haggard, Cleopatra^(http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Cleopatra_(Haggard)/Book_II/Chapter_XI), Book II: The Fall of Harmachis, →ISBN, Chapter XI:]
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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.
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a pile of shot
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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: [...] [1717, Samuel Croxall, “Book XIII. [The Funeral of Memnon.]”, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Fifteen Books. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, page 463:]
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He made a pile from that invention of his.
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When they are at work they live most frugally, denying themselves every comfort and luxury till they have made a "pile." [1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 192:]
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The pile is of a gloomy and massive, rather than of an elegant, style of Gothic architecture; […] [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:]
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The pile o'erlooked the town and drew the fight. [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:]
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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[…] [1892, Thomas Hardy, The Well-Beloved:]
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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. [2021 September 22, Stephen Roberts, “The writings on the wall...”, in RAIL, number 940, page 75:]
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The word "pile" is used specifically to mean the column of superposed electrodes, such as that of Volta or Zamboni. [1893, Benjamin Park, The Voltaic Cell: Its Construction and Its Capacity, page 14:]
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And the moment it thumped into the net, Celtic’s march back to the top of the SPL pile also seemed unstoppable. [2011 December 29, Keith Jackson, “SPL: Celtic 1 Rangers 0”, in Daily Record:]
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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. [2012 September 20, Shaun Edwards, “Bent double and lungs burning – how Harlequins train for trophies”, in The Guardian (online):]
Nouns inflected like pile
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
From Middle English pyle, from Old French pile, from Latin pīla (“pillar, pier”). See: Middle English Nouns '
pyle'.
Verbs referencing "pile"
Spanish Nouns
pelo, Italian Nouns
pile, German Nouns
Pfeil.