pile

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun A quantity of objects stacked or thrown together in a heap. synonym: heap.
• noun A large accumulation or quantity.
• noun A large amount of money.
• noun A nuclear reactor.
• noun A voltaic pile.
• noun A very large building or complex of buildings.
• noun A funeral pyre.
• intransitive verb To place or lay in a pile or heap.
• intransitive verb To load (something) with a heap or pile.
• intransitive verb To add or increase to abundance or to a point of burdensomeness.
• intransitive verb To form a heap or pile.
• intransitive verb To move in, out, or forward in a disorderly mass or group.
• noun A heavy beam of timber, concrete, or steel, driven into the earth as a foundation or support for a structure.
• noun Heraldry A wedge-shaped charge pointing downward.
• noun A Roman javelin.
• transitive verb To drive piles into.
• transitive verb To support with piles.
• noun Cut or uncut loops of yarn forming the surface of certain fabrics, such as velvet, plush, and carpeting.
• noun The surface so formed.
• noun Soft fine hair, fur, or wool.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun In gambling, all the capital a player has to lose on the game; all the chips in front of a player.
• noun A single hemorrhoidal tumor. See piles.
• noun In artillery, a heap of shot or shells piled up by horizontal courses in parallel tiers into a pyramidal or wedge-like form, the form being determined by that of the base, which may be a triangle, a square, or a rectangle. In a triangular pile the base is an equilateral triangle, and there is one sphere at the apex. The numbers in the successive horizontal tiers, reckoned from the top downward, are the triangular numbers 1, 3, 6, 10 … ½ n (n + 1).
• To lay or throw into a heap; heap, or heap up; collect into a pile or mass: as, to pile wood or stones.
• To bring into an aggregate; accumulate: as, to pile quotations or comments.
• Same as fagot, 2
• noun A heap consisting of an indefinite number of separate objects, commonly of the same kind, arranged of purpose or by natural causes in a more or less regular (cubical, pyramidal, cylindrical, or conical) form; a large mass, or a large quantity: as, a pile of stones; a pile of wood; a pile of money or of grain.
• noun Specifically A funeral pile; a pyre. See funeral pile, under funeral.
• noun An oblong rectangular mass of cut lengths of puddled bars of iron, laid together and ready for being rolled after being raised to a welding-temperature in a reheating-furnace.
• noun In electricity, a series of plates of two dissimilar metals, such as copper and zinc, laid one above the other alternately, with cloth or paper placed between each pair, moistened with an acid solution, for producing a current of electricity. See electricity.
• noun A large amount of money: a fortune: as, he has made his pile.
• A Middle English form of pill.
• noun Hair.
• noun Specifically, in hunting, in the plural, the hair or fur of an animal, as the boar, wolf, fox, etc.; hence, hairs collectively; pelage.
• noun The lay or set of the hair.
• noun A fiber, as of wool or cotton.
• noun In entomology, thinly set fine hairs which are ordinarily rather long.
• noun Nap of a regular and closely set kind, consisting of threads standing close together and shaved off smooth, so as to form a uniform and even surface.
• noun The pointed head of a staff, pike, arrow, or the like, when not barbed, generally of a rounded form and serving as a ferrule; also, an arrow.
• noun A javelin.
• noun [The above is an imitation of the following passage:
• noun A pointed stake; specifically, in architecture and engineering, a beam, heavy, generally of timber, often the roughly trimmed trunk of a tree, pointed or not at the end and driven into the soil for the support of some superstructure or to form part of a wall, as of a Coffer-dam or quay.
• noun A post such as that used in the exercise of the quintain.