stack
n. countablen. a neat pile of things sitting on top of each other. You might have a stack of books on your desk or a stack of pancakes for breakfast.
n. an orderly pile or heap of objects, typically arranged one on top of another. In computing, it refers to a data structure where the last item added is the first one removed.
He left a tall stack of papers on my desk.
The librarian spent the afternoon organizing a messy stack of returned books into their proper categories.
The architect designed the library with a central stack of shelves that rises through all four floors, creating a vertical spine of knowledge visible from the street.
From Middle English stack, stacke, stakke, stak, from Old Norse stakkr (“a barn; haystack; heap; pile”), from Proto-Germanic *stakkaz (“a barn; rick; haystack”). The data structure sense is a calque of Dutch stapel, introduced by Edsger W. Dijkstra. Cognate with Icelandic stakkur (“stack”), Swedish stack (“stack”), Danish stak (“stack”), Norwegian stakk (“stack”). Related to stake and sauna.
Often followed by the preposition 'of' to specify the items in the pile.