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Noun: piles  pI(-u)lz
  1. Venous swelling external or internal to the anal sphincter
    - hemorrhoid [N. Amer], haemorrhoid [Brit, Cdn]
  2. A large number or amount
    "made piles of new friends";
    - tons, dozens, heaps, lots, scores, stacks, loads, rafts, slews, wads, oodles, gobs [N. Amer], scads [N. Amer], lashings [Brit], many, masses [Brit]
Noun: pile  pI(-u)l
  1. A collection of objects laid on top of each other
    - heap, mound, agglomerate, cumulation, cumulus
    "a pile of letters";
    - batch, deal, flock, good deal, great deal, hatful, heap, lot, mass, mess, mickle [archaic], mint, mountain, muckle, passel [US], peck, plenty, pot, quite a little, raft, sight, slew, spate, stack, tidy sum, wad, bunch
  3. A large sum of money (especially as pay or profit)
    "she made a pile selling real estate";
    - bundle, big bucks, megabucks, big money, bomb [Brit]
  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)
    - down
  5. Battery consisting of voltaic cells arranged in series; the earliest electric battery devised by Volta
    - voltaic pile, galvanic pile
    - spile, piling, stilt
  7. The yarn (as in a rug, velvet or corduroy) that stands up from the weave
    "for uniform colour and texture tailors cut velvet with the pile running the same direction";
    - nap
  8. A nuclear reactor that uses controlled nuclear fission to generate energy
    - atomic pile, atomic reactor, chain reactor
Verb: pile  pI(-u)l
  1. Arrange in stacks
    "pile your books up on the shelves";
    - stack, heap
  2. Press tightly together or cram
    - throng, mob, pack, jam
  3. Place or lay as if in a pile

See also: pile up

Type of: accumulation, aggregation, arrange, assemblage, battery, collection, column, crowd, crowd together, electric battery, hair, large indefinite amount, large indefinite quantity, lay, money, nuclear reactor, pillar, place, pose, position, put, reactor, set, set up, symptom, thread, yarn

Encyclopedia: Piles, Valencia

Pile, William