Other forms: mounds
A mound is a raised heap of earth, or of anything else. Bigger than a pile, smaller than a hill.
Archaeology uses it precisely, since a burial mound is a real category and Britain is dotted with them. Gardens have compost mounds and baseball has the pitcher's mound. Everyday use is looser, so a mound of paperwork or a mound of mashed potato is any generous heap. The word suggests a rounded shape, which is what separates a mound from a stack. Hillock and hummock are its landscape cousins.
1nounmoundA rounded heap of earth or other material.
“There was a mound of clothes on the chair.”
2nounartificialAn artificial hill, often ancient and used for burial.
“They excavated the mound in the top field.”
A mound was a protection. Old English mund meant a hand, and then the hand of protection or guardianship, and the English word went through hedge and fence before it settled on a heap of earth.
Proto-Indo-European
*mh₂-nt-éh₂ — the beckoning one
Proto-Germanic
*mundō — hand
Proto-West Germanic
*mundu
Old English
mund — hand, hand of protection, protector, guardianship
Middle English
mound
English, today
mound
Built from
From earlier meaning "hedge, fence", from Middle English mound, mund (“protection, boundary, raised earthen rampart”), from Old English mund (“hand, hand of protection, protector, guardianship”), from Proto-West Germanic mundu, from Proto-Germanic mundō (“hand”), munduz (“protection, patron”), from Proto-Indo-European mh₂-nt-éh₂ (“the beckoning one”), from (s)meh₂- (“to beckon”). Cognate with Old Frisian mund (“guardianship”), Middle Dutch mond (“protection”), Old High German munt (“hand, protection”) German Mündel (“ward”), Vormund (“guardian”)), Icelandic - and Old Norse mund (“hand”), and possibly Latin manus (“hand”), Ancient Greek μάρη (“hand”). Not related to mount.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA