pile-up

• pileup

Deverbal from pile up.

pile-up (plural pile-ups)

1. (colloquial) A pile, a group of people or things which have piled up on one another, especially
   1. A pile of crashed vehicles due to a traffic accident.

      Traffic was backed up for miles due to a twelve-car pile-up on the freeway earlier today.

      • 2020 August 29, Jeremy Whittle, “Alexander Kristoff takes Tour de France yellow jersey after day of crashe”, in The Guardian‎:

        Pinot was among those involved in the huge pile-up just as the race entered the final three kilometres. Grazes were visible under his torn clothing as he pedalled, with a face like thunder, to the finish line.

   2. (American football) A pile of tackling players.
2. An accumulation that occurs over time, especially one which is not welcome.
   • 2001, Gavriel Salvendy, Handbook of Industrial Engineering: Technology and Operations Management, →ISBN:

     If the supervisor deals with daily workload in an orderly way and does not put pressure on the employee about a pile-up of work, then the employee's perception of pressure will be reduced and the employee will not suffer from work pressure stress.

   • 2002, Carl-Mikael Zetterling, Process Technology for Silicon Carbide Devices, →ISBN, page 107:

     Evidently, the annealing in NO ambient results in a pile-up of nitrogen at the oxide/SiC interface and this results in a reduction of interface states near the conduction band edge of 4H-SiC [16,30,31].

   • 2004, G. Molnar, Handbook of Prompt Gamma Activation Analysis: With Neutron Beams, →ISBN:

     Cusp-like trapezoidal shaping functions have been shown to produce the best signal-to-noise ratio and still maintain short duration to avoid pile-up of events.

   • 2014, Hamilton I Mc Cubbin, Marvin B Sussman, Social Stress and the Family, →ISBN:

     Because family crises evolve and are resolved over a period of time, families seldom are dealing with a single stressor, but rather, our longitudinal data suggest they experience a pile-up of stressors and strains (i.e., demands), particularly in the aftermath of a major stressor, such as a death, a major role change for one member, or a natural disaster.

• (American football): See dogpile

• pile-on

• luppie, uppile