stack
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stack¹
- /stæk/ US, UK
Rhymes with -æk
Where it comes from
From Middle English stack, stacke, stakke, stak, from Old Norse stakkr (“a barn; haystack; heap; pile”), from Proto-Germanic *stakkaz (“a barn; rick; haystack”).
The data structure sense is a calque of Dutch stapel, introduced by Edsger W. Dijkstra. Cognate with Icelandic stakkur (“stack”), Swedish stack (“stack”), Danish stak (“stack”), Norwegian stakk (“stack”). Related to stake and sauna.
noun stacks
- A large pile of hay, grain, straw, or the like, larger at the bottom than the top, sometimes covered with thatch. But corn was housed, and beans were in the stack.
- A pile of similar objects, each directly on top of the last. Please bring me a chair from that stack in the corner.
- A pile of poles or wood, indefinite in quantity. There was againſt euery Pillar, a Stacke of Billets, aboue a Mans Height;
- A pile of wood containing 108 cubic feet. (~3 m³)
- An extensive collection She performed appallingly on standard neurological tests, which are, as Sacks perceptively notes, specifically designed to deconstruct the whole person into a stack of 'abilities'.
- A smokestack. With just the turn of a shoulder she indicated the water front, where, at the end of the dock on which they stood, lay the good ship, Mount Vernon, river packet, the black smoke already pouring from her stacks.
- A linear data structure in which items inserted are removed in reverse order (the last item inserted is the first one to be removed).
- A stack data structure stored in main memory that is manipulated during machine language procedure call related instructions. When the microprocessor decodes the JSR opcode, it stores the operand into the TEMP register and pushes the current contents of the PC ($00 0128) onto the stack.
-
An implementation of a protocol suite (set of protocols forming a layered architecture).
A TCP/IP stack is a library or set of libraries or of OS drivers that take care of networking.
Similar: protocol stack
-
A combination of interdependent, yet individually replaceable, software components or technologies used together on a system.
A Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP (LAMP) stack is a configuration of four popular products for hosting websites.
Similar: technology stack
- A generalization of schemes in algebraic geometry and of sheaves.
- A coastal landform, consisting of a large vertical column of rock in the sea. A boat's-crew landed one time upon one of the stacks with the intention of attacking the seals.
- Compactly spaced bookshelves used to house large collections of books. You took me to your library and kissed me in the stacks.
- A large amount of an object. They paid him a stack of money to keep quiet.
- A pile of rifles or muskets in a cone shape.
- The amount of money a player has on the table.
- A number of flues embodied in one structure, rising above the roof.
- A vertical drainpipe.
- A fall or crash, a prang. "You've got to go all out in a race or you don't get a good time," he said. "But going all out means that you have a few stacks."
- A blend of various dietary supplements or anabolic steroids with supposed synergistic benefits.
- A holding pattern, with aircraft circling one above the other as they wait to land.
- The quantity of a given item which fills up an inventory slot or bag. I've got 107 Golden Branches, but the stack size is 20 so they're taking up 6 spaces in my inventory.
verb stacks · stacking · stacked
-
To arrange in a stack, or to add to an existing stack.
Please stack those chairs in the corner.
Similar: build up, stack up, accumulate, agglomerate, amass, cumulate, heap, heap up, mound, pile, pile up, rack up
- To arrange the cards in a deck in a particular manner, especially for cheating. This is the third hand in a row where you've drawn four of a kind. Someone is stacking the deck!
- To arrange or fix to obtain an advantage; to deliberately distort the composition of (an assembly, committee, etc.). to be stacked against (someone)
- To take all the money another player currently has on the table. I won Jill's last $100 this hand; I stacked her!
- To crash; to fall. Jim couldn't make it today as he stacked his car on the weekend.
- To operate cumulatively. A magical widget will double your mojo. And yes, they do stack: if you manage to get two magical widgets, your mojo will be quadrupled. With three, it will be octupled, and so forth.
- To place (aircraft) into a holding pattern.
- To collect precious metal in the form of various small objects such as coins and bars.
-
To have excessive ink transfer.
Opposite: skip
Stack²
proper noun
- A surname.
Thesaurus
Closest in meaning: pot, hatful, batch, smokestack, spate, raft, wad, slew, pile, heap, peck, mass, lot, stagger, flock, great deal
Translations
Every language
noun pile of identical objects
| Español | pila, montón, hacina, arcina, almiar, rimero |
|---|---|
| 한국어 | 무더기 mudeogi |
| 日本語 | 塚 tsuka |
| 中文 | 堆 duī |
| हिन्दी | धुआँरा dhuā̃rā |
| Português | pilha |
| Français | pile |
| Deutsch | Stapel, Feime, Schober, Diemen |
| Italiano | pila, bica, balla di fieno |
| Ελληνικά | στοίβα stoíva |
| Română | căpiță, stivă |
| Русский | сто́пка stópka, ки́па kípa, стог stog |
| Tiếng Việt | chồng |
| العربية | كَوْمَة kawma, كُومَة kūma |
| עברית | ערמה aremá |
Talk about this word "stack." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/stack. Accessed 5 Nov. 2026. stack. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/stack "stack." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 5, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/stack.Cite this
@misc{stack_2026,
title = {stack},
howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
year = {2026},
url = {https://micwyn.com/word/stack},
urldate = {2026-11-05}
}
