pile up

verb

1. to gather or be gathered in a pile; accumulate

2. informal,  to crash or cause to crash

noun

1. informal,  a multiple collision of vehicles

Idioms and Phrases

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]

Be involved in a crash, as in When the police arrived, at least four cars had piled up . [Late 1800s]

Example Sentences

Then they pile up into penitentiary-high walls, blocking highways, closing bike trails and trapping people in their homes.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Instead, while players from both teams piled up near the line of scrimmage, he spun out to the right and ran untouched into the end zone for a 35-yard, game-winning score.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Cancellations and delays piled up, with more than 2,600 flights, or about 10% of all air traffic in the U.S., scrapped on Nov. 9.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

A 40-something woman and her spouse must decide whether to continue pursuing fertility treatments as costs pile up and their chances at pregnancy diminish.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

At the southern edge of the city, they saw corpses piled up in the huge trench the RSF had dug to surround it.

Read more on Barron's

Related Words

• batter 
• decimate 
• demolish 
• destroy 
• devastate 
• impair 
• injure 
• mangle 
• mar 
• ravage 
• raze 
• ruin 
• sabotage 
• shatter 
• sink 
• smash 
• spoil 
• torpedo 
• trash 
• undermine