PILES Synonyms: 260 Similar and Opposite Words

piles 1 of 3

noun (1)

plural of pile

as in stacks

a quantity of things thrown or stacked on one another a large pile of newspapers that needed to be disposed of

Synonyms & Similar Words

Relevance

as in loads

a considerable amount a job that paid piles of money

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Antonyms & Near Antonyms

piles

2 of 3

noun (2)

plural of pile

as in furs

a soft airy substance or covering the lush pile of the carpeting

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as in wools

the hairy covering of a mammal especially when fine, soft, and thick a dog with such a dense pile that he never minded the cold

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piles

3 of 3

verb

present tense third-person singular of pile

as in heaps

to lay or throw on top of one another piled all the clothes on the chair before putting them away

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Antonyms & Near Antonyms

unpiles

as in huddles

to gather into a closely packed group the kids piled into the car

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Antonyms & Near Antonyms

Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Recent Examples of piles

Noun

Across the country, grain — a key export — piles up in fields and silos as farmers struggle to find routes safe from airstrikes and wait for prices to rise. — ABC News, 3 Nov. 2026 The band was jeered at during live appearances and some angry listeners even bulldozed over piles of their CDs. — Charisma Madarang, Rolling Stone, 3 Nov. 2026 Mayo Clinic Health System’s holiday wellness guidance recommends planning ahead and setting limits before the stress piles up. — Ashley Lynch, Sacbee.com, 30 Oct. 2026 Investors have turned more skittish on companies with tall debt piles as central bankers raise interest rates to fight inflation. — Jordan Novet, CNBC, 30 Oct. 2026 When Anthropic goes public, the stock its seven cofounders hold stands to be worth up to $200 billion between them, carved up into seven nearly identical piles. — Amanda Gerut, Fortune, 26 Oct. 2026 The birthday cakes appear pulled out of manila envelopes along with piles of pictures, as if being entered into evidence at a trial. — Emily Watlington, ARTnews.com, 25 Oct. 2026 To prevent them from hiding in your hard, get rid of piles of leaves, twigs, and other debris, and trim overgrown vegetation, grass, and dense shrubs. — Karen Brewer Grossman, Southern Living, 24 Oct. 2026 Anisha Patel-Dunn, chief medical officer, LifeStance Health Behavior piles onto biology. — Hanna Wickes, Miami Herald, 23 Oct. 2026

Verb

My father piles French toast and syrup onto a plate and my mother pours a glass of milk. — Literary Hub, 17 Sep. 2026 Big swine farms produce huge amounts of solid waste, which piles up in lagoons until a flood can wash them into rivers. — Bill McKibben, New Yorker, 17 Sep. 2026 Once a week, Hall piles his three kids in the car, drives five minutes to Costco and turns into the second row of the parking lot. — Jessica Guynn, USA Today, 30 July 2026 According to relationship experts at The Gottman Institute, couples who talk through those details in advance tend to adjust more smoothly and argue less about the small stuff that piles up after move-in day. — Ashley Lynch, Sacbee.com, 29 July 2026 Instead of asking whether existing programs are delivering results, Congress piles new spending and new funding streams onto an already fragmented system. — Andy Harris, Baltimore Sun, 4 July 2026 The dirty laundry never piles up, nor does the ready-to-fold pile. — Tessa Cooper, The Spruce, 30 June 2026 More specifically — and without spoiling a story that piles the twists as high as the corpses — Pine's an ex-British soldier pulled from his porter duties and recruited to surveil a ruthless arms dealer, Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie) staying at the hotel. — Matt Cabral, Entertainment Weekly, 10 Apr. 2026 The result piles more pressure on Starmer, the least popular prime minister since records began, according to some polls. — Alexander Smith, NBC news, 27 Feb. 2026

Recent Examples of Synonyms for piles

Noun

This week, stacks of sandbags were piled onto Newport Beach’s miles-long network of seawalls around Balboa Island and the Balboa Peninsula, an effort to give the historic walls just a bit more height against the rising tide.

— Hannah Fry, Los Angeles Times, 30 Oct. 2026
The experts in Oviedo had stacks of papers proving that parts of the process worked.

— Katie Worth, ProPublica, 30 Oct. 2026

Definition of stacks

Noun

Cranes lift 200-ton loads at mountain bridge site The R4300-200 has a maximum lifting capacity of 200 metric tons (220 US tons) and an 80-meter jib (262 feet).

— Kaif Shaikh, Interesting Engineering, 24 Oct. 2026
Its remaining civil rights workers have described untenable case loads and pressure to dismiss complaints.

— Jennifer Smith Richards, ProPublica, 22 Oct. 2026

Definition of loads

Noun

The Hollywood Reporter got a sneak peek of Meemaw, which sees Barr running amok in thrift store furs at rooster fights — closer in tone to trailer park comedy like My Name Is Earl than the three-camera repartee of Roseanne.

— Seth Abramovitch, HollywoodReporter, 20 Oct. 2026
The ban covers textiles, leather, furs and hides in clothing, footwear and other related accessories for the general public.

— Roy Stephen Canivel, Footwear News, 13 Oct. 2026

Definition of furs

Noun

Using luxurious cottons, silks, wools and linen to emphasize the simplicity and ease of wardrobe staples — T-shirts, shorts, sweatshirts, skirts, button-down shirts, pants and tunics — elevating their wearability for day and night.

— Tonya Blazio-Licorish, Footwear News, 4 Aug. 2026
Although the word cashmere is sometimes incorrectly applied to extremely soft wools, only the product of the cashmere goat is true cashmere.

— Encyclopedia Britannica, Encyclopedia Britannica, 31 Mar. 2026

Definition of wools

Verb

San Andrés Mixquic, Mexico — As night falls over the cemetery in San Andrés Mixquic, a historic village on the outskirts of Mexico City, the family of Ángel Jiménez del Águila huddles around his grave.

— Rocio Muñoz Ledo, CNN Money, 31 Oct. 2026
Despite his injury, Tasci continued to be an active participant on the sideline and in team huddles throughout the game.

— Sean Campbell, Daily News, 28 Aug. 2026

Definition of huddles

Noun

Surrounding this former Franciscan convent were orchards and open fields and Native American burial mounds.

— Christopher Borrelli, Chicago Tribune, 29 Oct. 2026
Spanning nearly 100 acres, Tavşanlı Höyük is one of the region’s most extensive Bronze Age mounds, and contains remnants of local Anatolian communities dating as far back as 8,000 years.

— Andrew Paul, Popular Science, 28 Oct. 2026

Definition of mounds

Noun

The effect is something like an off-season approximation of a sidewalk, and, your winter climate permitting, sidewalk chalk (tons of it, for $18) is another good option.

— Molly Fischer, New Yorker, 2 Nov. 2026
The natural gas storage well failed and uncontrollably released nearly 100,000 tons of methane and other substances into the atmosphere for more than 100 days.

— ABC News, ABC News, 2 Nov. 2026

Definition of tons

Noun

Despite the freezing temperatures, agents confiscated the migrants’ coats and refused to give them blankets.

— Francisco Cantú, New Yorker, 2 Nov. 2026
There’s a part in the Robbie episode where Fiona talks about how flight attendants putting their coats and luggage in the closet that’s supposed to hold wheelchairs makes her life way harder.

— Katie Campione, Deadline, 2 Nov. 2026