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• pile driver
  pile driver

  noun

  a machine for driving piles, usually composed of a tall framework in which either a weight is raised and dropped on a pile head or in which a steam hammer drives the pile.
• pile-driver
  pile-driver

  noun

  a machine that drives piles into the ground either by repeatedly allowing a heavy weight to fall on the head of the pile or by using a steam hammer

pile driver

American  

noun

1. a machine for driving piles, usually composed of a tall framework in which either a weight is raised and dropped on a pile head or in which a steam hammer drives the pile.

2. a person who operates such a machine.

3. a person who hits or attacks forcefully or powerfully.

4. Wrestling. a move whereby an opponent is turned upside down and slammed headfirst to the mat.

5. British Sports. a powerful stroke, hit, kick, etc.

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pile-driver British  

noun

1. a machine that drives piles into the ground either by repeatedly allowing a heavy weight to fall on the head of the pile or by using a steam hammer

2. informal a forceful punch or kick

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Etymology

Origin of pile driver

First recorded in 1765–75

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

pile driver pile-driver

The sounds of construction — the slow beeps of a truck in reverse, a pile driver pounding the hard earth — filled the air.

From Seattle Times ● May 31, 2024

“I don’t understand why it is like this all day,” Yesenia Diaz shouted, as a pile driver pounded foundations into the tan earth a few hundred feet away.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 29, 2021

Perforated pipes encircle the pile driver, blowing a wall of air bubbles that absorb and refract the noise, reducing it by as much as 15 dB.

From Scientific American ● Feb. 23, 2021

Early on, John Roberts—who was thought at least to be suggestible on the question on whether Texas has standing to bring suit—performs a pile driver on Solicitor General Donald Verrilli.

From Slate ● Apr. 18, 2016

Will closed his eyes and let himself just remember his dad: his dad throwing him across his parents’ king-size bed, pretending to wrestle, doing a Jerry Lawler pile driver and then a Sgt.

From "Nine, Ten: A September 11 Story" by Nora Raleigh Baskin

Rooke threw off the Russian with an elbow, giving the defender a black eye, and hit a pile-driver from 25 yards that flew past Khomich.

From BBC ● Nov. 13, 2020

In the second round he made an astonishing save in stoppage time to push clear a 35-metre pile-driver by Colombia’s Mateus Uribe that was heading for the top corner.

From Reuters ● Jul. 7, 2018

After intermission, Franz Welser-Möst led a pile-driver account of Shostakovich’s hysterical, apocalyptic Fourth Symphony.

From The New Yorker ● Dec. 14, 2016

It is a brilliant sport, though, a cross between basketball and five-a-side football that revolves around its array of bravura close-in finishes: the pile-driver, the slot to the corner, even the cheeky dink, the palm-Pirlo.

From The Guardian ● Aug. 6, 2012

These docks were made by a big American pile-driver, which in less than a year had driven 30,000 piles into the marshy ooze, and made a foundation for enormous docks.

From Our Army at the Front by Heywood Broun

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