pile-up

plural pile-ups · alternative pileup

1. A pile, a group of people or things which have piled up on one another, especially
   1. colloquialA 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.

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      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.

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

   2. colloquialAmerican footballA pile of tackling players.
2. An accumulation that occurs over time, especially one which is not welcome.

   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.

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

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   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.

   2001, Gavriel Salvendy, Handbook of Industrial Engineering: Technology and Operations Management, →ISBN

   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].

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

   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.

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