Pile

Pile - (Webster's 1828 Dictionary)

PILE, n. [L. pila.]

1. A heap; a mass or collection of things in a roundish or elevated form; as a pile of stones; a pile of bricks; a pile of wood or timber; a pile of ruins.

2. A collection of combustibles for burning a dead body; as a funeral pile.

3. A large building or mass of buildings; an edifice.

The pile o'erlook'd the town and drew the sight.

4. A heap of balls or shot laid in horizontal courses, rising into a pyramidical form.

PILE, n. [L. palus.]

1. A large stake or piece of timber, pointed and driven into the earth, as at the bottom of a river, or in a harbor where the ground is soft, for the support of a building or other superstructure. The stadthouse in Amsterdam is supported by piles.

2. One side of a coin; originally, a punch or puncheon used in stamping figures on coins, and containing the figures to be impressed. Hence the arms-side of a coin is called the pile, and the head the cross, which was formerly in the place of the head. Hence cross and pile.

3. In heraldry, an ordinary in form of a point inverted or a stake sharpened.

PILE, n. [L. pilum.] The head of an arrow.

PILE, n. [L. pilus.] Properly, a hair; hence, the fiber of wool, cotton and the like; hence, the nap, the fine hairy substance of the surface of cloth.

PILE, v.t. To lay or throw into a heap; to collect many things into a mass; as, to pile wood or stones.

1. To bring into an aggregate; to accumulate; as, to pile quotations or comments.

2. To fill with something heaped.

3. To fill above the brim or top.

4. To break off the awns of threshed barley. [Local.]

pil (medhurah, from dur, "heap up"): Isa 30:33, "The pile thereof is fire and much wood"; Eze 24:9,10, "I also will make the pile great. Heap on the wood, make the fire hot." Isa 30:33 may be paraphrased, `the pyre thereof is of much wood, burning fiercely.'

See TOPHETH.