bank vs pile

bank

noun
  • The ground at the top of a shaft. 

  • An institution where one can place and borrow money and take care of financial affairs. 

  • A contiguous block of memory that is of fixed, hardware-dependent size, but often larger than a page and partitioning the memory such that two distinct banks do not overlap. 

  • Money; profit. 

  • An edge of river, lake, or other watercourse. 

  • The incline of an aircraft, especially during a turn. 

  • The regular term of a court of law, or the full court sitting to hear arguments upon questions of law, as distinguished from a sitting at nisi prius, or a court held for jury trials. See banc 

  • A row or panel of items stored or grouped together. 

  • A row of keys on a musical keyboard or the equivalent on a typewriter keyboard. 

  • An incline, a hill. 

  • A slope of earth, sand, etc.; an embankment. 

  • The sum of money etc. which the dealer or banker has as a fund from which to draw stakes and pay losses. 

  • A fund from deposits or contributions, to be used in transacting business; a joint stock or capital. 

  • A branch office of such an institution. 

  • A device used to store coins or currency. 

  • An elevation, or rising ground, under the sea; a shallow area of shifting sand, gravel, mud, and so forth (for example, a sandbank or mudbank). 

  • A mass noun for a quantity of clouds. 

  • The face of the coal at which miners are working. 

  • An underwriter or controller of a card game. 

  • A set of multiple adjacent drop targets. 

  • A bench, as for rowers in a galley; also, a tier of oars. 

  • A bench or seat for judges in court. 

  • A deposit of ore or coal, worked by excavations above water level. 

  • In certain games, such as dominos, a fund of pieces from which the players are allowed to draw. 

  • A safe and guaranteed place of storage for and retrieval of important items or goods. 

  • A bench, or row of keys belonging to a keyboard, as in an organ. 

verb
  • To put into a bank. 

  • To arrange or order in a row. 

  • To raise a mound or dike about; to enclose, defend, or fortify with a bank; to embank. 

  • To provide additional power for a train ascending a bank (incline) by attaching another locomotive. 

  • To conceal in the rectum for use in prison. 

  • To deal with a bank or financial institution, or for an institution to provide financial services to a client. 

  • To cause (an aircraft) to bank. 

  • To roll or incline laterally in order to turn. 

  • To form into a bank or heap, to bank up. 

  • To cover the embers of a fire with ashes in order to retain heat. 

pile

noun
  • A beam, pole, or pillar, driven completely into the ground. 

  • A large building, or mass of buildings. 

  • One of the ordinaries or subordinaries having the form of a wedge, usually placed palewise, with the broadest end uppermost. 

  • The head of an arrow or spear. 

  • A list or league 

  • A mass formed in layers. 

  • A large amount of money. 

  • A bundle of pieces of wrought iron to be worked over into bars or other shapes by rolling or hammering at a welding heat; a fagot. 

  • A large stake, or piece of pointed timber, steel etc., driven into the earth or sea-bed for the support of a building, a pier, or other superstructure, or to form a cofferdam, etc. 

  • A mass of things heaped together; a heap. 

  • Hair, especially when very fine or short; the fine underfur of certain animals. (Formerly countable, now treated as a collective singular.) 

  • An atomic pile; an early form of nuclear reactor. 

  • A vertical series of alternate disks of two dissimilar metals (especially copper and zinc), laid up with disks of cloth or paper moistened with acid water between them, for producing a current of electricity; a voltaic pile, or galvanic pile. 

  • The raised hairs, loops or strands of a fabric; the nap of a cloth. 

  • A hemorrhoid. 

  • A funeral pile; a pyre. 

  • A group or list of related items up for consideration, especially in some kind of selection process. 

verb
  • To add something to a great number. 

  • (of vehicles) To create a hold-up. 

  • To place (guns, muskets, etc.) together in threes so that they can stand upright, supporting each other. 

  • To drive piles into; to fill with piles; to strengthen with piles. 

  • To give a pile to; to make shaggy. 

  • To lay or throw into a pile or heap; to heap up; to collect into a mass; to accumulate 

  • To cover with heaps; or in great abundance; to fill or overfill; to load. 

How often have the words bank and pile occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )