pile up
Britishverb
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to gather or be gathered in a pile; accumulate
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informal to crash or cause to crash
noun
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Accumulate, as in The leaves piled up in the yard , or He piled up a huge fortune . In this idiom pile means “form a heap or mass of something.” [Mid-1800s]
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Be involved in a crash, as in When the police arrived, at least four cars had piled up . [Late 1800s]
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
It is a nice gesture but the dogs pile up on themselves, get tangled and turn inward.
From Literature
The sleet piled up and hid the trail.
From Literature
As job cuts pile up, Tinner is up against intense competition in a job market flooded with talent from the top companies in tech.
From Los Angeles Times
When it can’t export, unsold products pile up at home and contribute to deflationary worries.
In the third over he put down Samson on 15 – a mistake India punished by piling up the highest T20 score ever made against England.
From BBC
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
