different between pile vs crowd

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.

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /k?a?d/
• Rhymes: -a?d

Etymology 1

From Middle English crouden, from Old English cr?dan, from Proto-Germanic *kr?dan?, *kreudan?. Cognate with Dutch kruien.

Verb

crowd (third-person singular simple present crowds, present participle crowding, simple past and past participle crowded)

1. (intransitive) To press forward; to advance by pushing.

2. (intransitive) To press together or collect in numbers

   Synonyms: swarm, throng, crowd in

   • Images came crowding on his mind faster than he could put them into words.

3. (transitive) To press or drive together, especially into a small space; to cram.
4. (transitive) To fill by pressing or thronging together
   • 1875, William Hickling Prescott, History of the Reign of Philip the Second, King of Spain

     The balconies and verandas were crowded with spectators, anxious to behold their future sovereign.

5. (transitive, often used with "out of" or "off") To push, to press, to shove.
6. (nautical) To approach another ship too closely when it has right of way.
7. (nautical, of a square-rigged ship, transitive) To carry excessive sail in the hope of moving faster.
8. (transitive) To press by solicitation; to urge; to dun; hence, to treat discourteously or unreasonably.

Synonyms

• becrowd (dated)

Derived terms

Translations

Noun

crowd (plural crowds)

1. A group of people congregated or collected into a close body without order.
2. Several things collected or closely pressed together; also, some things adjacent to each other.

3. (with definite article) The so-called lower orders of people; the populace, vulgar.
4. A group of people united or at least characterised by a common interest.

Synonyms

• (group of things): aggregation, cluster, group, mass
• (group of people): audience, group, multitude, public, swarm, throng
• (the "lower orders" of people): everyone, general public, masses, rabble, mob, unwashed

Derived terms

Translations

Etymology 2

Inherited from Middle English crowde, from Welsh crwth or a Celtic cognate.

Noun

crowd (plural crowds)

1. (obsolete) Alternative form of crwth
   • 1600, Ben Jonson, Cynthia's Revels

     A lackey that […] can warble upon a crowd a little.

2. (now dialectal) A fiddle.

Derived terms

• crowder

Verb

crowd (third-person singular simple present crowds, present participle crowding, simple past and past participle crowded)

1. (obsolete, intransitive) To play on a crowd; to fiddle.
   • 1656, Thomas Middleton, William Rowley, and Philip Massinger, The Old Law

     Fiddlers, crowd on, crowd on.

References

crowd in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

Anagrams

• c-word