''heap'' ⚬｜Definition｜1st｜20260704124452-00-⌔

heap - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

heap (plural heaps)

• 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 Sciences¹
  • ✤ He had plenty of friends, heaps of friends in the parliamentary sense²
• 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
  • ✤ Every break seemed dangerous and Falcao clearly had the beating of Amorebieta. Others, being forced to stretch a foot behind them to control Arda Turan’s 34th-minute cross, might simply have lashed a shot on the turn; Falcao, though, twisted back on to his left foot, leaving Amorebieta in a heap, and thumped in an inevitable finish – his 12th goal in 15 European matches this season.⁴
• A great number or large quantity of things.
  • ✤ a vast heap, both of places of scripture and quotations⁵
  • ✤ I have noticed a heap of things in my life.⁶
• (computing) A data structure consisting of trees in which each node is greater than all its children.
• (computing) Memory that is dynamically allocated.
  • ✤ You should move these structures from the stack to the heap to avoid a potential stack overflow.
• (colloquial) 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.⁷
• (colloquial) 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 […]⁸

Verb

heap (third-person singular simple present heaps, present participle heaping, simple past and past participle heaped)

• (transitive) To pile in a heap.
  • ✤ He heaped the laundry upon the bed and began folding.
• (transitive) 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.⁹
• (transitive) 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.¹⁰

Adverb

heap (not comparable)

• (possibly offensive) 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.¹¹
  • ✤ 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.¹²
  • ✤ 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.¹³

Etymology

From Middle English hepe, from Old English hēap, from Proto-West Germanic ﹡haup, from Proto-Germanic ﹡haupaz (compare Dutch hoop, German Low German Hupen, German Haufen), from Proto-Indo-European ﹡koupos (“hill”) (compare Lithuanian kaũpas, Albanian qipi (“stack”), Avestan 𐬐𐬂𐬟𐬀 (kåfa)).

Pronunciation

• enPR: hēp, IPA: /hiːp/
• (Ireland, dated) enPR: hāp, IPA: /heːp/
• Audio (US): 🔊
• Rhymes: -iːp

Printed 2026-07-04.

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Footnotes

1. 1622 (date written), Francis[Bacon], “An Advertisement Touching an Holy Warre. […]”, in William Rawley, editor, Certaine Miscellany Works of the Right Honourable Francis Lo. Verulam, Viscount S. Alban. […], London: […] I. Hauiland for Humphrey Robinson, […], published 1629, →OCLC, page 104: ↩

2. 1858, Anthony Trollope, Doctor Thorne. […], volume, London: Chapman & Hall, […], →OCLC: ↩

3. 1697, Virgil, “”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC: ↩

4. 2012 May 9, Jonathan Wilson, “Europa League: Radamel Falcao’s Atlético Madrid rout Athletic Bilbao”, in the Guardian ‎${}^{[1]}$: ↩

5. 1679, Gilbert Burnet, The History of the Reformation of the Church of England: ↩

6. 1878, Robert Louis Stevenson, Will o’ the Mill: ↩

7. 1991 May 12, “Kidnapped!”, in Jeeves and Wooster, Series 2, Episode 5: ↩

8. 1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 10, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849–1850, →OCLC: ↩

9. 1819, John Keats, Otho the Great, act I, scene II, verses 40-42: ↩

10. 2022 January 12, Nigel Harris, “Comment: Unhappy start to 2022”, in RAIL, number 948, page 3: ↩

11. 1895, Annie Maria Barnes, Matouchon: A Story of Indian Child Life, page 175: ↩

12. 1980, Joey Lee Dillard, Perspectives on American English, page 417: ↩

13. 2004, John Robert Colombo, The Penguin Book of Canadian Jokes, page 175: ↩