pile
n. countablen. a group of things lying on top of each other. You can use it for a neat stack of books or a messy heap of clothes.
n. a collection of objects laid one on top of another; a heap. Often used figuratively to describe a large quantity of something.
There is a large pile of laundry on the bed.
She spent the entire afternoon sorting through a pile of old documents to find her birth certificate.
The architect pointed to a pile of discarded bricks, explaining that they would be repurposed for the garden wall to maintain the property's historic aesthetic.
From Middle English pyle, from Old French pile, from Latin pīla (“pillar, pier”).
From Middle English pile, from Old English pīl, from Proto-West Germanic *pīl, from Latin pīlum (“heavy javelin”). Cognate with Dutch pijl, German Pfeil. Doublet of pilum.
Apparently from Late Latin pilus. Doublet of pilus.
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.
From French pile (“battery”), with the pronunciation adapted to the existing English word pile. Doublet of Etymology 1, which may have influenced the sense development by emphasizing the stack (“pile”) out of which early batteries were made.
Commonly takes the preposition 'of' followed by a plural noun.