Heap

How to spell heap

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce heap

What does heap mean?

1. nounAn untidy pile or mound of things gathered loosely together.
2. verbTo pile or load something in a large, untidy quantity.

Heap in a sentence

• noun

  She left a heap of laundry on the bedroom floor.

• verb

  The waiter began to heap rice onto every plate.

• noun

  The gardener raked the leaves into one tidy heap.

• verb

  They always heap praise on the new recruits.

Where does heap come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Heap descends from the Old English noun 'hēap', which meant a pile or a great mass and could also mean a crowd of people gathered together. It belongs to a wider Germanic family, with close relatives such as Dutch 'hoop' and German 'Haufen', all carrying the sense of things gathered into one mound. The original double sense, both 'pile of stuff' and 'throng of people', survived for centuries, which is why old writers could speak of a heap of folk as easily as a heap of stones. Over time the everyday physical sense of a loose pile won out, and the casual sense of 'a large amount' (a heap of trouble) grew from it. The spelling is mercifully phonetic, with the 'ea' simply representing the long 'ee' sound it shares with words like 'leap' and 'reap'.

How the word is built

• heap (single Old English root meaning a pile or crowd; no prefix or suffix)