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Blame the Romans. The Latin words for a hair, a spear and a pillar all start with "pil". Well, that doesn't explain heap, which I think was us finding a new usage related to the pillar/pile idea.
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England and the UK in general has been invaded by forrins for millennia and has at least five indigenous languages and countless dialects. All these different influences have given us English, innit?
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You making fun of my lovely Norman Pile mixte ?
itsbruce
Constable_Savage
Foreigner65
@russmeyer
This might be a good place to demand an explanation for one of the weirdest words in English: 'pile'. I mean you have lots of words meaning almost the same thing which makes English a more nuanced and complex language than for example Swedish. And then there's the word 'pile' meaning either a type of sweater, distended veins around your anus or a pointy piece of wood to hammer into the ground. Or a pile of all three.