Word.ws English Dictionary

piles on

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

Meaning of pile on

Verb

pile on (third-person singular simple present piles on, present participle piling on, simple past and past participle piled on)

  1. (ambitransitive) To jump on top of someone or something quickly.
    • As football linebackers pile on a quarterback in a blitz, the newspaper editorialist heaped sarcasm onto the president.2006, Steven M. Hallock, Editorial and Opinion: The Dwindling Marketplace of Ideas in Today's News, Praeger, →ISBN, page 69
  2. (ambitransitive, figuratively) To criticize someone or something in a concerted effort; to add on some additional critique.
    • OK, OK, they've already gotten the constructive criticism. Now you're just piling on.
  3. (figuratively, intransitive) To unnecessarily extend the margin of a winning score.
  4. (informal, transitive) To add or apply in great quantities.

Questions about piles on

What is piles on the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Piles on is the third-person singular simple present indicative of pile on.

Words near piles on in the dictionary

  1. pilers
  2. piles
  3. piles in
  4. piles of crap
  5. piles of shit
  6. piles on
  7. piles out
  8. piles Pelion on Ossa
  9. piles up
  10. pileum
  11. pileup

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: piles on (page history and authors); pile on (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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Cite this entry: “piles on.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/piles_on. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.