heap

Etymology

Definitions

1. 1

   A crowd

   A crowd; a throng; a multitude or great number of people.

   • A Heap of Vassals, and Slaues: […] A People that is without Naturall Affection, […] A Nation without Morality, without Letters, Arts, or Sciences
   • He had plenty of friends, heaps of friends in the parliamentary sense
2. 2

   A pile or mass

   A pile or mass; a collection of things laid in a body, or thrown together so as to form an elevation.

   • a heap of earth; a heap of stones
   • Huge heaps of slain around the body rise.
3. 3

   A great number or large quantity of things.

   • a vast heap, both of places of scripture and quotations
   • I have noticed a heap of things in my life.
4. ›+ 10 more definitionsshow fewer

   1. 4

      A data structure consisting of trees in which each node is greater than all its children.

   2. 5

      Memory that is dynamically allocated.

      • You should move these structures from the stack to the heap to avoid a potential stack overflow.
   3. 6

      A dilapidated place or vehicle.

      • My first car was an old heap.
      • Chuffy: It's on a knife edge at the moment, Bertie. If he can get planning permission, old Stoker's going to take this heap off my hands in return for vast amounts of oof.
   4. 7

      A lot, a large amount

      • Thanks a heap!
      • [W]e went to the play, and Pen was struck all of a heap with Miss Fotheringay … And he’s fallen in love with her—and I’m blessed if he hasn’t proposed to her […]
   5. 8

      To pile in a heap.

      • He heaped the laundry upon the bed and began folding.
   6. 9

      To form or round into a heap, as in measuring.

      • Cry a reward, to him who shall first bring News of that vanished Arabian, A full-heap’d helmet of the purest gold.
   7. 10

      To supply in great quantity.

      • They heaped praise upon their newest hero.
      • Then, in January, a creeping tsunami of train cancellations, triggered by major staff absences as a result of the aggressive transmissibility of Omicron, heaped further misery on rail users.
   8. 11

      very or much

      very or much; representing broken English stereotypically or comically attributed to Native Americans

      • Chuckaway too no good. Heap water, little chuckaway. Heap sticks, and still little chuckaway.
      • We are all familiar with the stereotyped broken English which writers of Western stories, comic strips, and similar literature put into the mouths of Indians: 'me heap big chief', 'you like um fire water', and so forth.
      • Once upon a time, a Scotsman, an Englishman, and an Irishman are captured by the Red Indians […] He approaches the Englishman, pinches the skin of his upper arm, and says, "Hmmm, heap good skin, nice and thick.
   9. 12

      A surname.

   10. 13

       Acronym of high explosive armor-piercing.

The neighborhood

• synonymheap up
• synonympile up