From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englisha pile of somethinga pile of something (also piles of something) informalLOT/LARGE NUMBER OR AMOUNT a lot of something We’ve had piles of letters from viewers. another pile of directives from the EU → pile
Examples from the Corpus
a pile of something• We went through piles and piles of songs deciding which were best for my voice.• His savoirfaire had vanished and he was prodding desperately at a pile of coal black spheres.• Fifi continues to pack from a pile of clothes she has emptied out of her drawers on to the floor.• But he knew what he was looking at, though to the untrained eye it was just a pile of minuscule fragments.• It was hot, and the hills were brown and dry, laid out like a pile of kindling.• Inside the truck I could see what looked like a thousand frozen turkeys stacked up like a pile of stones.• She found one little girl of about four under a pile of masonry.• I was intrigued by this and so he went to the store room and eventually returned with a pile of prints. 