Word.ws English Dictionary

piles

/paɪlz/

piles is the plural of pile.

piles is the third-person singular simple present indicative of pile.

Meaning of pile

Noun

pile (plural piles)

  1. (collective) A mass of things heaped together; a heap.
    • 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
  2. (informal) A group or list of related items up for consideration, especially in some kind of selection process.
    • 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.
  3. A mass formed in layers.
    • a pile of shot
  4. A funeral pile; a pyre.
    • 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
  5. (slang) A large amount of money.
    • He made a pile from that invention of his.
  6. A large building, or mass of buildings.
    • 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...

See all 30 meanings of pile

Noun (1)

piles pl (plural only)

  1. (informal, plural, plural-only, piles of) A large amount of.
    • He must earn piles of money.
    Synonyms:
    heaps of, load of, mountain of, shedload of, ton of

Noun (2)

piles pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only) Haemorrhoids.
    • Many women get piles when pregnant.
    • Who with thy leaves shall wipe (at need)
      The place where swelling Piles do breed ...1648, Robert Herrick, “Another”, in Hesperides

Proper noun capitalized: Piles

Piles

  1. (plural) plural of Pile

Synonyms of piles

  • heaps of
  • load of
  • mountain of
  • shedload of
  • ton of

Origin of piles

From Latin pila (“ball”).

Words formed from piles

Phrases with piles

17 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with piles

Questions about piles

What does piles mean?
Piles means a large amount of.
What is piles the plural of?
Piles is the plural of pile.
What part of speech is piles?
Piles can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce piles?
Piles is pronounced /paɪlz/.

Words near piles in the dictionary

  1. pileorhiza
  2. pileorhizae
  3. pileous
  4. piler
  5. pilers
  6. piles
  7. piles in
  8. piles of crap
  9. piles of shit
  10. piles on
  11. piles out

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: piles (page history and authors); Piles (page history and authors); pile (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Persent101-piles.wav.

Cite this entry: “piles.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/piles. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.