noun, verb
noun-see also PILES
1 [C] a number of things that have been placed on top of each other:
a pile of books / clothes / bricks * He arranged the documents in neat piles. * She looked in horror at the mounting pile of letters on her desk.
2 [C] a mass of sth that is high in the middle and wider at the bottom than at the top:
a pile of sand * piles of dirty washing
3 [C] ~ of sth (formal) a lot of sth:
I have got piles of work to do. * He walked out leaving a pile of debts behind him.
4 [U,sing.] the short threads, pieces of wool, etc. that form the soft surface of carpets and some fabrics such as VELVET:
a deep-pile carpet * Corduroy is the poor man's velvet; its pile is made of cotton rather than silk or satin.
5 [C] a large wooden, metal or stone post that is fixed into the ground and used to support a building, bridge etc.
6 [C] (formal or humorous) a large impressive building:
a Victorian pile built to house the mentally ill * the ancestral pile
IDIOMS
(at the) bottom / top of the pile in the least/most important position in a group of people or things:
It's been 20 years since a British player was top of the pile.
make a / your pile (informal) to make a lot of money:
The family made its pile from oil. * I bet they made an absolute pile out of the deal.
Part of speech: verb
1 [VN] ~ sth (up) to put things one on top of another; to form a pile:
She piled the boxes one on top of the other. * The clothes were piled high on the chair. * Snow was piled up against the door.
2 [VN+adv./prep.] ~ A in(to) / on(to) B
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for pile is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is pile a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, pile is tagged as verb.
Does pile appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — pile appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
