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PILES
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
A large number or amount
Example:
she amassed stacks of newspapers
Synonyms:
dozens; gobs; heaps; lashings; loads; lots; oodles; piles; rafts; scads; scores; slews; stacks; tons; wads
Classified under:
Nouns denoting quantities and units of measure
Hypernyms ("piles" is a kind of...):
large indefinite amount; large indefinite quantity (an indefinite quantity that is above the average in size or magnitude)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Venous swelling external or internal to the anal sphincter
Synonyms:
haemorrhoid; hemorrhoid; piles
Classified under:
Nouns denoting stable states of affairs
Hypernyms ("piles" is a kind of...):
symptom ((medicine) any sensation or change in bodily function that is experienced by a patient and is associated with a particular disease)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
Present simple (third person singular) of the verb pile
Context examples:
There was a round score of muskets for the seven of us; the firewood had been built into four piles—tables, you might say—one about the middle of each side, and on each of these tables some ammunition and four loaded muskets were laid ready to the hand of the defenders.
(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
So, for example, if I should say, in a letter to a friend, ‘Our brother Tom has just got the piles,’ a skilful decipherer would discover, that the same letters which compose that sentence, may be analysed into the following words, ‘Resist —, a plot is brought home—The tour.’ And this is the anagrammatic method.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
By using this approach, the composting process is accelerated by approximately two months compared to the usual method of treating sludge in aerated piles, and by one month compared to another classic method that uses concrete containers.
(Scientists validate a new technology that transforms sewage sludge into fertilizer more efficiently, University of Granada)
It was a very large chamber, lined with innumerable volumes, which had overflowed from the shelves and lay in piles in the corners, or were stacked all round at the base of the cases.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Mrs. March and Meg sat among the apple piles like a pair of Pomonas, sorting the contributions that kept pouring in, while Amy with a beautiful motherly expression in her face sketched the various groups, and watched over one pale lad, who sat adoring her with his little crutch beside him.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
Slimy gaps and causeways, winding among old wooden piles, with a sickly substance clinging to the latter, like green hair, and the rags of last year's handbills offering rewards for drowned men fluttering above high-water mark, led down through the ooze and slush to the ebb-tide.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Meek, mouse-colored donkeys, laden with panniers of freshly cut grass passed by, with a pretty girl in a capaline sitting between the green piles, or an old woman spinning with a distaff as she went.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
We stayed there two days and two nights, a hundred and thirty men with sixteen Lewis guns, and when the infantry came up at last they found the insignia of three German divisions among the piles of dead.
(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)
