Word.ws English Dictionary

piling on

piling on is the present participle and gerund of pile on.

Noun

piling on (uncountable)

  1. An illegal strategy wherein players tackle an opposing player.
  2. The process by which additional combatants join an ongoing fight or argument when they think they know who will win so that they will be on the winning side.
  3. The process by which multiple people pick on, complain about or list the faults of their target.
  4. (broadly) The steady addition of more problems to an already problematic situation or circumstance.
  5. (broadly) Doing more and more (of something), especially when it is inappropriate or problematic, such as by continuing to break a diet

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 piling on

What does piling on mean?
Piling on means an illegal strategy wherein players tackle an opposing player.
What is piling on the present participle and gerund of?
Piling on is the present participle and gerund of pile on.
What part of speech is piling on?
Piling on is a noun.

Words near piling on in the dictionary

  1. Pililla
  2. pilimiction
  3. pilin
  4. piling
  5. piling in
  6. piling on
  7. piling out
  8. piling Pelion on Ossa
  9. piling rig
  10. piling rigs
  11. piling up

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: piling 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: “piling on.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/piling_on. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.