different between parcel vs pile

English

Etymology

From Middle English parcel, from Old French parcelle (“a small piece or part, a parcel, a particle”), from Vulgar Latin *particella, diminutive of Latin particula (“particle”), diminutive of pars (“part, piece”). Doublet of particle.

Pronunciation

• enPR: pär?-s?l, IPA^(key): /?p??s?l/
  • (General Australian) IPA^(key): [?p?a?.s??]
  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): [?p???.s??]
  • (General American) IPA^(key): [?p???.s??]
• Rhymes: -??(r)s?l
• Hyphenation: par?cel

Noun

parcel (plural parcels)

1. A package wrapped for shipment.

   Synonym: package

   • At twilight in the summer […] the mice come out. They […] eat the luncheon crumbs. Mr. Checkly, for instance, always brought his dinner in a paper parcel in his coat-tail pocket, and ate it when so disposed, sprinkling crumbs lavishly […] on the floor.
2. An individual consignment of cargo for shipment, regardless of size and form.
3. A division of land bought and sold as a unit.

   Synonym: plot

4. (obsolete) A group of birds.
5. An indiscriminate or indefinite number, measure, or quantity; a collection; a group.
   • c. 1602, William Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well, Act II, Scene 3,^[2]

     […] this youthful parcel

     Of noble bachelors stand at my bestowing,

   • 1847, Herman Melville, Omoo, Part 2, Chapter 79,^[3]

     […] instead of sitting (as she ought to have done) by her good father and mother, she must needs run up into the gallery, and sit with a parcel of giddy creatures of her own age […]

6. A small amount of food that has been wrapped up, for example a pastry.
7. A portion of anything taken separately; a fragment of a whole; a part.
   • 1731, John Arbuthnot, An essay concerning the nature of aliments, London: J. Tonson, Chapter 4, p. 85,^[4]

     The same Experiments succeed on two Parcels of the White of an Egg […]

   • 1881, John Addington Symonds, The Renaissance in Italy, Volume 5, Part I, New York: Henry Holt, Chapter 1, p. 2,^[5]

     The parcels of the nation adopted different forms of self-government, sought divers foreign alliances.

Derived terms

Related terms

Translations

See also

• lot
• allotment

Verb

parcel (third-person singular simple present parcels, present participle parceling or parcelling, simple past and past participle parceled or parcelled)

1. To wrap something up into the form of a package.
2. To wrap a strip around the end of a rope.

   Worm and parcel with the lay; turn and serve the other way.

3. To divide and distribute by parts or portions; often with out or into.
   • 1592, William Shakespeare, Richard III, Act II, Scene 2,^[6]

     Their woes are parcell’d, mine are general.

   • 1667, John Dryden, The Indian Emperour, London: H. Herringman, Act I, Scene 2, p. 12,^[7]

     Those ghostly Kings would parcel out my pow’r,

     And all the fatness of my Land devour;

   • 1864, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Aylmer’s Field” in Enoch Arden, etc., London: Edward Moxon, pp. 94-95,^[8]

     Then the great Hall was wholly broken down,

     And the broad woodland parcell’d into farms;

4. To add a parcel or item to; to itemize.
   • c. 1606, William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, Act V, Scene 2,^[9]

     […] that mine own servant should

     Parcel the sum of my disgraces by

     Addition of his envy!

Translations

Adverb

parcel (not comparable)

1. (obsolete) Part or half; in part; partially.
   • c. 1597, William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2, Act II, Scene 1,^[10]

     Thou didst swear to me upon a parcel-gilt goblet […]

   • 1826, Walter Scott, Woodstock, or The Cavalier, Chapter 4,^[11]

     […] as the worthy dame was parcel blind and more than parcel deaf, knowledge was excluded by two principal entrances […]

   • 1864, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Aylmer’s Field” in Enoch Arden, etc., London: Edward Moxon, p. 59,^[12]

     here was one [a hut] that, summer-blanch’d,

     Was parcel-bearded with the traveller’s-joy

     In Autumn, parcel ivy-clad;

Further reading

• parcel in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• parcel in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

Anagrams

• Placer, carpel, craple, placer

Danish

Etymology

Borrowed from French parcelle (“parcel”), from Latin particula (“particle”), diminutive of pars (“part”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [p???s?l?]

Noun

parcel c (singular definite parcellen, plural indefinite parceller)

1. parcel, lot (subdivided piece of land registred independently in official records)
2. (informal) detached house

   Synonym: parcelhus

Inflection

Portuguese

Noun

parcel m (plural parcéis)

1. a shoal, a sandbank

   Synonyms: vau, vado, baixo, baixio, esparcel, restinga, sirte

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.