Forum Topic

‘Pile on or Pile-on’?

Which one is correct, has anyone ever seen one in action?pile onphrasal verbpiled on; piling on; piles onUS, informal: to join other people in criticizing something or someone in usually an unfair wayAfter the first few negative reviews, all the other critics started piling on.pile-onnoun [ C ]UK  /ˈpaɪlˌɒn/ US  /ˈpaɪlˌɑːn/ an argument or attack by a large group of people against one person or a much smaller group:After his temper tantrum, a pile-on by commentators immediately ensued.The actor began a pile-on over some random tweet.

Russell Pearson ● 324d10 Comments

Seems like another Americanism which is now being used here. In the last five minutes of Coronation Street tonight came the sentence 'I know they've all been piling on'(or some such).

Anne England ● 322d

Fowler (Modern English Usage, 1925!): "hyphens are regrettable necessities, and to be done without when they reasonably may".  If there is no danger of confusion resulting, then perhaps there is no need to hyphenate the compound noun 'pile on'.

Robert Fish ● 322d

What do you think of our efforts so far?

Anne England ● 322d

As does 'cock-up'..

Peter Evans ● 323d

No, but I’ve seen ‘pile-up’ which follows the same principles.

Alastair Banton ● 323d

Have you ever, in your life, seen the word 'pile-on' written? I haven't! (Don't doubt it exists as in the dictionary.) Just as long as we don't get mixed up with 'electric pylon'...

Anne England ● 323d

What's the problem with these piles?

Brian Coyle ● 323d

The verb to pile on has no hyphen but the noun, pile-on, does.  This is according to the Cambridge dictionary.  I guess the reason is that pile-on meaning joining in the attack is quite distinct from the original meaning of ‘pile’ as in ‘I was looking for the Leggo and I eventually found it in a huge pile on the kitchen floor’.  Readers like things to be instantly understandable so it’s best not to omit the hyphen if you want to convey the joining-in-the-attack meaning.  But no animals will die if you get it wrong.

Alastair Banton ● 323d

There again, we also use 'pile in or in to/into' which has much the same meaning as your USA example so perhaps just a change of preposition.I have to ask myself why I find such things interesting!

Anne England ● 324d

Hello, in as far as I understand your post, isn't the use of 'piling on' in the US sense just an(other) example of changing a noun into a verb as in 'She was tasked with ...', 'He medalled (argh!) ...' etc.I've never seen the UK hyphenated noun 'pile-on' before.The only 'piling on' in the UK sense of which I'm aware is 'piling on weight' and yes, I have seen and maybe even experienced this in action!

Anne England ● 324d