pile-up

Noun

pile-up (plural pile-ups)

1. (colloquial) A pile of crashed vehicles due to a traffic accident.
   • Traffic was backed up for miles due to a twelve-car pile-up on the freeway earlier today.
   • Pinot was among those involved in the huge pile-up just as the race entered the final three kilometres. Grazes were visible under his torn clothing as he pedalled, with a face like thunder, to the finish line.2020 August 29, Jeremy Whittle, “Alexander Kristoff takes Tour de France yellow jersey after day of crashe”, in The Guardian
2. (colloquial) A pile of tackling players.
3. An accumulation that occurs over time, especially one which is not welcome.
   • If the supervisor deals with daily workload in an orderly way and does not put pressure on the employee about a pile-up of work, then the employee's perception of pressure will be reduced and the employee will not suffer from work pressure stress.2001, Gavriel Salvendy, Handbook of Industrial Engineering: Technology and Operations Management, →ISBN
   • Evidently, the annealing in NO ambient results in a pile-up of nitrogen at the oxide/SiC interface and this results in a reduction of interface states near the conduction band edge of 4H-SiC [16,30,31].2002, Carl-Mikael Zetterling, Process Technology for Silicon Carbide Devices, →ISBN, page 107