different between pack vs pile

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /pæk/, [p?æk]
• Rhymes: -æk

Etymology 1

From Middle English pak, pakke, from Old English pæcca and/or Middle Dutch pak, packe; both ultimately from Proto-Germanic *pakkô (“bundle, pack”). Cognate with Dutch pak (“pack”), Low German Pack (“pack”), German Pack (“pack”), Swedish packe (“pack”), Icelandic pakka, pakki (“package”).

Noun

pack (plural packs)

1. A bundle made up and prepared to be carried; especially, a bundle to be carried on the back, but also a load for an animal, a bale.

2. A number or quantity equal to the contents of a pack
3. A multitude.

4. A number or quantity of connected or similar things; a collective.
5. A full set of playing cards

6. The assortment of playing cards used in a particular game.

7. A group of hounds or dogs, hunting or kept together.
   • 2005, John D. Skinner and Christian T. Chimimba, The Mammals of the Southern African Subregion

     African wild dogs hunt by sight, although stragglers use their noses to follow the pack.

8. A wolfpack: a number of wolves, hunting together.
9. A group of people associated or leagued in a bad design or practice; a gang.
10. A group of Cub Scouts.
11. A shook of cask staves.
12. A bundle of sheet iron plates for rolling simultaneously.
13. A large area of floating pieces of ice driven together more or less closely.

14. (medicine) An envelope, or wrapping, of sheets used in hydropathic practice, called dry pack, wet pack, cold pack, etc., according to the method of treatment.
15. (slang): A loose, lewd, or worthless person.
16. (snooker, pool) A tight group of object balls in cue sports. Usually the reds in snooker.
17. (rugby) The forwards in a rugby team (eight in Rugby Union, six in Rugby League) who with the opposing pack constitute the scrum.

Synonyms

(full set of cards): deck

Derived terms

Translations

Etymology 2

From Middle English pakken, from the noun (see above). Compare Middle Dutch packen (“to pack”), Middle Low German packen (“to pack”).

Verb

pack (third-person singular simple present packs, present participle packing, simple past and past participle packed)

1. (physical) To put or bring things together in a limited or confined space, especially for storage or transport.
   1. (transitive) To make a pack of; to arrange closely and securely in a pack; hence, to place and arrange compactly as in a pack
      • 1712, Joseph Addison, The Spectator Number 275

        strange materials wound up in that shape and texture, and packed together with wonderful art in the several cavities of the skull
   2. (transitive) To fill in the manner of a pack, that is, compactly and securely, as for transportation; hence, to fill closely or to repletion; to stow away within; to cause to be full; to crowd into.
   3. (transitive) To wrap in a wet or dry sheet, within numerous coverings.

   4. (transitive) To make impervious, such as by filling or surrounding with suitable material, or to fit or adjust so as to move without allowing air, water, or steam inside.

   5. (intransitive) To make up packs, bales, or bundles; to stow articles securely for transportation.
   6. (intransitive) To form a compact mass, especially in order for transportation.

   7. (intransitive, of animals) To gather together in flocks, herds, schools or similar groups of animals.

   8. (transitive, historical) To combine (telegraph messages) in order to send them more cheaply as a single transmission.
2. (social) To cheat.
   1. (transitive, card games) To sort and arrange (the cards) in the pack to give oneself an unfair advantage
      • 1733 Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man

        Mighty dukes pack cards for half a crown.

   2. (transitive) To bring together or make up unfairly, in order to secure a certain result.
      • 1687, Francis Atterbury, An answer to some considerations on the spirit of Martin Luther and the original of the Reformation

        The expected council was dwindling into […] a packed assembly of Italian bishops.

   3. (transitive) To contrive unfairly or fraudulently; to plot.
      • 1655, Thomas Fuller, The church-history of Britain

        He lost life […] upon a nice point subtilely devised and packed by his enemies.

   4. (intransitive) To put together for morally wrong purposes; to join in cahoots.
3. (transitive) To load with a pack

4. (transitive, figuratively) to load; to encumber.
5. To move, send or carry.
   1. (transitive) To cause to go; to send away with baggage or belongings; especially, to send away peremptorily or suddenly; – sometimes with off. See pack off.
   2. (transitive, US, chiefly Western US) To transport in a pack, or in the manner of a pack (on the backs of men or animals).
   3. (intransitive) To depart in haste; – generally with off or away.
      • 1723, Jonathan Swift, Stella at Wood-Park:

        Poor Stella must pack off to town.

      • 1842, Alfred Tennyson, Dora:

        You shall pack, / And never more darken my doors again.

   4. (transitive, slang) To carry weapons, especially firearms, on one's person.

6. (transitive, sports, slang) To block a shot, especially in basketball.
7. (intransitive, rugby, of the forwards in a rugby team) To play together cohesively, specially with reference to their technique in the scrum.
8. (intransitive, LGBT, of a drag king, trans man, etc.) To wear a prosthetic penis inside one’s trousers for better verisimilitude.

Synonyms

• (To sort and arrange (the cards) in a pack so as to secure the game unfairly): stack

Antonyms

• (make into a pack): unpack

Derived terms

Translations

French

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /pak/

Noun

pack m (plural packs)

1. pack (item of packaging)
2. pack ice
3. (sports) A rugby team

Middle English

Noun

pack

1. Alternative form of pak

Scots

Adjective

pack

1. intimate; confidential

Spanish

Etymology

From English pack.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?pak/, [?pak]

Noun

pack m (plural packs)

1. pack, package
2. kit, set, bundle
3. (colloquial, euphemistic) sexual photos and videos, paid or not, sent over internet, network social; sexting photos

Swedish

Noun

pack n

1. a group of unwanted people, lower class people, trash
2. stuff, things, luggage; only in the expression pick och pack

Declension

See also

• packa
• paket

Descendants

• ? Finnish: pakka

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /pa?l/
• Rhymes: -a?l

Etymology 1

Borrowed from Middle French pile, pille, from Latin p?la (“pillar, pier”).

Noun

pile (plural piles)

1. A mass of things heaped together; a heap.
2. (figuratively, informal) A group or list of related items up for consideration, especially in some kind of selection process.

3. A mass formed in layers.

4. A funeral pile; a pyre.
5. (slang) A large amount of money.

   Synonyms: bundle, (both informal) mint, (colloquial) small fortune

6. A large building, or mass of buildings.
   • 1817, Walter Scott, Rob Roy, II.2:

     The pile is of a gloomy and massive, rather than of an elegant, style of Gothic architecture […]

   • 1697, John Dryden, The Aeneid

     The pile o'erlooked the town and drew the fight.

   • 1892, Thomas Hardy, The Well-Beloved

     It was dark when the four-wheeled cab wherein he had brought Avice from the station stood at the entrance to the pile of flats of which Pierston occupied one floor […]

7. A bundle of pieces of wrought iron to be worked over into bars or other shapes by rolling or hammering at a welding heat; a fagot.
8. A vertical series of alternate disks of two dissimilar metals (especially copper and zinc), laid up with disks of cloth or paper moistened with acid water between them, for producing a current of electricity; a voltaic pile, or galvanic pile.
9. (architecture, civil engineering) A beam, pole, or pillar, driven completely into the ground.

   Hyponyms: friction pile, bearing pile, end bearing pile

   Coordinate terms: pile driver, pile foundation

10. An atomic pile; an early form of nuclear reactor.
11. (obsolete) The reverse (or tails) of a coin.
12. (figuratively) A list or league

    • Watch Harlequins train and you get some idea of why they are back on top of the pile going into Saturday's rerun of last season's grand final against Leicester.

Synonyms

• See also Thesaurus:lot

Translations

Verb

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

1. (transitive, often used with the preposition "up") To lay or throw into a pile or heap; to heap up; to collect into a mass; to accumulate

2. (transitive) To cover with heaps; or in great abundance; to fill or overfill; to load.

3. (transitive) To add something to a great number.
4. (transitive) (of vehicles) To create a hold-up.
5. (transitive, military) To place (guns, muskets, etc.) together in threes so that they can stand upright, supporting each other.

Synonyms

• (lay or throw into a pile): heap, pile up; see also Thesaurus:pile up

Translations

Related terms

Etymology 2

From Old English p?l, from Latin p?lum (“heavy javelin”). Cognate with Dutch pijl, German Pfeil. Doublet of pilum.

Noun

pile (plural piles)

1. (obsolete) A dart; an arrow.
2. The head of an arrow or spear.
3. A large stake, or piece of pointed timber, steel etc., driven into the earth or sea-bed for the support of a building, a pier, or other superstructure, or to form a cofferdam, etc.
4. (heraldry) One of the ordinaries or subordinaries having the form of a wedge, usually placed palewise, with the broadest end uppermost.

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

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

1. (transitive) To drive piles into; to fill with piles; to strengthen with piles.

Translations

Etymology 3

Apparently from Late Latin pilus.

Noun

pile (plural piles)

1. (usually in the plural) A hemorrhoid.

Translations

Etymology 4

From Middle English pile, partly from Anglo-Norman pil (a variant of peil, poil (“hair”)) and partly from its source, Latin pilus (“hair”). Doublet of pilus.

Noun

pile (countable and uncountable, plural piles)

1. Hair, especially when very fine or short; the fine underfur of certain animals. (Formerly countable, now treated as a collective singular.)
2. The raised hairs, loops or strands of a fabric; the nap of a cloth.
   • 1785, William Cowper, The Task

     Velvet soft, or plush with shaggy pile.

Translations

Verb

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

1. (transitive) To give a pile to; to make shaggy.

Anagrams

• Lipe, Peil, Piel, plie, plié

Danish

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /pi?l?/, [?p?i?l?]

Noun

pile c

1. indefinite plural of pil

French

Etymology

From Old French, from Latin p?la (through Italian pila for the “battery” sense). The “tail of a coin” sense is probably derived from previous senses, but it's not known for sure.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /pil/

Noun

pile f (plural piles)

1. heap, stack

2. pillar
3. battery

4. tails

5. (heraldry) pile

Derived terms

• pile ou face

Descendants

• ? Haitian Creole: anpil
• ? Khmer: ??? (p?l)
• ? Malagasy: pila
• ? Rade: pil
• ? Turkish: pil
• ? Vietnamese: pin

Adverb

pile

1. (colloquial) just, exactly
2. (colloquial) dead (of stopping etc.); on the dot, sharp (of time), smack

Derived terms

• pile-poil

Further reading

• “pile” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Anagrams

• plie, plié

Friulian

Etymology 1

From Latin p?la (“mortar”).

Noun

pile f (plural pilis)

1. basin
2. mortar (vessel used to grind things)

Synonyms

• (basin): vâs
• (mortar): mortâr

Etymology 2

From Latin p?la (“pillar”).

Noun

pile f (plural pilis)

1. pile (architecture)

Italian

Noun

pile m (invariable)

1. fleece (all senses)

Noun

pile f

1. plural of pila

Anagrams

• peli

Latin

Noun

pile

1. vocative singular of pilus

Latvian

Noun

pile f (5th declension)

1. drip

2. dribble (a small amount of a liquid)
3. drop

Declension

Lower Sorbian

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?p?il?/, [?p?il?]

Noun

pile

1. inflection of pi?a:
   1. dative/locative singular
   2. nominative/accusative dual

Middle English

Noun

pile

1. Alternative form of pilwe

Polish

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?p?i.l?/

Noun

pile f

1. dative/locative singular of pi?a

Portuguese

Verb

pile

1. first-person singular (eu) present subjunctive of pilar
2. third-person singular (ele and ela, also used with você and others) present subjunctive of pilar
3. third-person singular (você) affirmative imperative of pilar
4. third-person singular (você) negative imperative of pilar

Serbo-Croatian

Etymology

From Proto-Slavic *pil? (“chick”); but also a *piskl? is reconstructed related to *piskati (“to utter shrilly”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /pîle/
• Hyphenation: pi?le

Noun

p?le n (Cyrillic spelling ?????)

1. chick

Declension

See also

• kokoš
• pijevac / pevac
• pile?i gulaš

Verb

pile (Cyrillic spelling ????)

1. third-person plural present of piliti

Spanish

Verb

pile

1. First-person singular (yo) present subjunctive form of pilar.
2. Formal second-person singular (usted) present subjunctive form of pilar.
3. Third-person singular (él, ella, also used with usted^?) present subjunctive form of pilar.