Word.ws English Dictionary

all of a heap

all of a heap adverb: into a sudden state of collapse or astonishment.

Adverb

all of a heap (not comparable)

  1. (colloquial, idiomatic) Into a sudden state of collapse or astonishment.
    • I walked straight in expecting to find her waiting for me in the front room, — I was struck all of a heap when I found she wasn’t there.1897, Richard Marsh, The Beetle
    • What caught me all of a heap was that million-dollar sense of beauty, youth, and happiness.1916, Algernon Blackwood, The Dance of Death, first published in The Quest: A Quarterly Review

Questions about all of a heap

What does all of a heap mean?
All of a heap means into a sudden state of collapse or astonishment.
What part of speech is all of a heap?
All of a heap is an adverb.

Words near all of a heap in the dictionary

  1. all nighter
  2. all nighters
  3. all o' y'all
  4. all of
  5. all of a doodah
  6. all of a heap
  7. all of a sudden
  8. all of one's taste is in one's mouth
  9. all of the sudden
  10. all of y'all
  11. all on a sudden

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: all of a heap (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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