stockpile

UK/ˈstɒkpaɪl/US/ˈstɑkˌpaɪl/

nounB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #11,227 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: stockpiles

A stockpile is a large store built up against future need. A stockpile of grain.

It costs money to hold and saves everything when supply fails, which is the whole calculation. Governments stockpile medicines and fuel, and the argument is always about how much.

Definitions of stockpile

1nounstockpileA large store built up against future need.B2+
“The stockpile lasted eleven weeks and should have lasted six months.”

stockpile is a store.

Where it comes from

Stock plus pile; the verb came from the noun rather than the other way round.

The noun is derived from stock + pile. The verb is derived from the noun.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

stockpile in the wild

Luffing of the boom minimises dust by reducing the distance that material such as coal needs to fall to the top of the stockpile.
Stacker
The boom is luffed upwards as the height of the stockpile increases.
Stacker
The goal of the initiative is to extend the lifetime of the current aging stockpile.
Advanced Simulation and Computing Program
As of 2025, the US and Russia possess a comparable number of warheads; together more than 90% of the world's stockpile.
Nuclear weapons of the United States
Of the stockpile, 1,770 are deployed, while 1,930 are held in reserve.
Nuclear weapons of the United States

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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