Stacks

How to spell stacks

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce stacks

What does stacks mean?

1. nounNeatly arranged piles of objects placed one on top of another.
2. verbArranges objects into piles, one resting on top of another.
3. nounThe rows of shelving in a library where the main collection is stored.

Stacks in a sentence

• noun

  The accountant sorted the invoices into tidy stacks on her desk.

• verb

  Every morning he stacks the clean plates beside the sink.

• noun

  The rare manuscripts are kept in the closed stacks on the lower floor.

• noun

  Tall stacks of firewood lined the back wall of the shed.

• verb

  The librarian carefully stacks the returned books onto the trolley.

• noun

  Students wandered the stacks searching for journals from the 1970s.

Where does stacks come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

This word traces back to the Old Norse stakkr, which meant a haystack or a heap piled up out in a field. Norse settlers brought the term into northern England during the Viking age, and by the 1300s English had adopted 'stack' for any orderly pile of objects gathered one on top of another. The original sense survives in farming, where a stack still names a built-up mound of hay or straw, but the word soon broadened to cover piles of books, wood, coins, or papers. From the noun came a verb meaning to arrange things in such a pile, and the plural and third-person form 'stacks' simply adds the regular -s ending. Because the spelling is so phonetic, the only thing to watch is the double letters in the cluster 'ck' before the plural -s.

How the word is built

• stack (pile, from Old Norse stakkr)
• -s (plural noun / third-person verb ending)