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.
Seve has let the detritus of life pile up around him — literally — with delivery packages and plastic-wrapped clothes overrunning his tiny Baltimore apartment.
From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 25, 2026
When contradictions pile up, they are chalked up to style rather than substance.
From Salon • Mar. 2, 2026
Despite predictions she’d pile up the bucks, Talarico raised three times as much in his first weeks of declared candidacy as Crockett did in her equivalent launch period.
From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 18, 2026
The levels of outstanding bills continue to pile up and wage and job growth is weaker.
From Barron's • Feb. 10, 2026
There she had arranged her headquarters and begun to pile up all the things she was preparing for her daughter’s arrival.
From "The House of the Spirits: A Novel" by Isabel Allende
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.
