Wiktionary

stack

See also: Stack

English

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a woman standing next to a stack of files.

Etymology

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From Middle English stack, stacke, stakke, stak, from Old Norse stakkr (“a barn; haystack; heap; pile”), from Proto-Germanic *stakkaz (“a barn; rick; haystack”), which per Kroonen (arguing for the controversial Kluge's law) is from *stogʰ-nós, cognate with Ancient Greek στόχος (stokhos), but unclear whether he derives *stogʰ-nós from a Proto-Indo-European *stegʰ- (“pole; rod; stick; stake”). Per Pokorny et al., from PIE *(s)teg- (“stake, pole, rod, stick, beam”) and cognate with Latin tignum ("tree trunk, beam, log"), but not cognate with Ancient Greek στόχος.

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.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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stack (plural stacks)

  1. (heading) A pile.
    1. A large pile of hay, grain, straw, or the like, larger at the bottom than the top, sometimes covered with thatch.
      • c. 1790, William Cowper, The Needless Alarm:
        But corn was housed, and beans were in the stack.
    2. A pile of similar objects, each directly on top of the last.
      Please bring me a chair from that stack in the corner.
    3. (UK) A pile of poles or wood, indefinite in quantity.
      • 1631, Francis [Bacon], “III. Century. [Experiments in Consort Touching the Reflexion, of Sounds.]”, in Sylua Syluarum: Or A Naturall Historie. In Ten Centuries. […], 3rd edition, London: […] William Rawley […]; [p]rinted by J[ohn] H[aviland] for William Lee […], →OCLC, paragraph 249, page 67:
        There was againſt euery Pillar, a Stacke of Billets, aboue a Mans Height;
    4. A pile of wood containing 108 cubic feet. (~3 m³)
    5. An extensive collection
      • 1997, Guy Claxton, Hare brain, tortoise mind: why intelligence increases when you think less:
        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'.
      • 2005, Elizabeth McLeod, The Original Amos 'n' Andy: Freeman Gosden, Charles Correll and the 1928-1943 Radio Serial, McFarland, →ISBN, page 26:
        “We said, 'Maybe we could come up with a couple of characters doing jokes,'” Correll recalled in 1972. “We had a whole stack of jokes we used to do in these home talent shows
      • 2007, Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Education and Skills Committee, Post-16 skills: ninth report of session 2006-07, Vol. 2: Oral and written evidence, The Stationery Office →ISBN, page 42
        Going back to an earlier question, which I think is very important, this question of how you use skills. It is no good having a great stack of skills in a workplace if the employer does not utilise them properly
  2. A smokestack.
    • 1910, Emerson Hough, “A Lady in Company”, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:
      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.
    • 1949 January and February, F. G. Roe, “I Saw Three Englands–1”, in Railway Magazine, page 12:
      Long before Shap platform showed up around a corner and the two arms on the gradient post drooped in both directions at once, Duchess of Buccleuch's amiable throbbing purr at the stack had become a fierce freight-engine bark, as she resolutely dragged at her enormous load.
    • 1961 July, J. Geoffrey Todd, “Impressions of railroading in the United States: Part Two”, in Trains Illustrated, page 419:
      The leading engine was one of the Class Y6 2-8-8-2 compound articulateds, [...] The stack noise of one of these great brutes slogging up a grade was quite unforgettable.
  3. (heading) In computing.
    1. (programming) A linear data structure in which items inserted are removed in reverse order (the last item inserted is the first one to be removed).
      Hyponym: history stack
    2. (computing, often with "the") A stack data structure stored in main memory that is manipulated during machine language procedure call related instructions.
      • 1992, Michael A. Miller, The 68000 Microprocessor Family: Architecture, Programming, and Applications, page 47:
        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.
    3. (networking) 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.
      Synonym: protocol stack
    4. A combination of interdependent, yet individually replaceable, software components or technologies used together on a system.
      Synonym: technology stack
      • 2016, John Paul Mueller, AWS For Admins For Dummies, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 323:
        A Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP (LAMP) stack is a configuration of four popular products for hosting websites.
  4. (mathematics) A generalization of schemes in algebraic geometry and of sheaves.
  5. (geology) A coastal landform, consisting of a large vertical column of rock in the sea.
  7. (library) Compactly spaced bookshelves used to house large collections of books.
    • 1994, The Magnetic Fields, “Swinging London”, in Holiday:
      You took me to your library and kissed me in the stacks.
  8. (figuratively) A large amount of an object.
    They paid him a stack of money to keep quiet.
  9. (military) A pile of rifles or muskets in a cone shape.
  10. (poker) The amount of money a player has on the table.
  11. (heading) In architecture.
    1. A number of flues embodied in one structure, rising above the roof.
    2. A vertical drainpipe.
  12. (Australia, slang) A fall or crash, a prang.
    • 1989 April 9, Ian Watt, “Canberra skier wins medals”, in The Canberra Times‎[1], retrieved 2022-08-07:
      "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."
    • 2016 June 19, Tom Williams, “Watch Justin Bieber Stack It, Fall Off Stage While Fixing His Pants”, in Music Feeds‎[2], Evolve Media, retrieved 2020-11-17:
      Fan-shot footage of Bieber’s big stack (not a euphemism) sees the pop singer trying to adjust his pants during a concert in the Canadian city of Saskatoon on Thursday night, 16th June, before an audible “THWACK” can be heard as he falls off the stage.
  13. (bodybuilding) A blend of various dietary supplements or anabolic steroids with supposed synergistic benefits.
  14. (aviation) A holding pattern, with aircraft circling one above the other as they wait to land.
  15. (video games) 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.

Derived terms

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Translations

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Verb

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stack (third-person singular simple present stacks, present participle stacking, simple past and past participle stacked)

  1. (transitive) To arrange in a stack, or to add to an existing stack.
    Please stack those chairs in the corner.
    • 2013 January 22, Phil McNulty, “Aston Villa 2-1 Bradford (3-4)”, in BBC:
      James Hanson, the striker who used to stack shelves in a supermarket, flashed a superb header past Shay Given from Gary Jones's corner 10 minutes after the break.
    • 2013 July-August, Catherine Clabby, “Focus on Everything”, in American Scientist:
      Not long ago, it was difficult to produce photographs of tiny creatures with every part in focus. […] A photo processing technique called focus stacking has changed that. Developed as a tool to electronically combine the sharpest bits of multiple digital images, focus stacking is a boon to biologists seeking full focus on a micron scale.
    Synonyms: build up, stack up; see also Thesaurus:pile up
  2. (transitive, card games) 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!
  3. (transitive, by extension) To arrange or fix to obtain an advantage; to deliberately distort the composition of (an assembly, committee, etc.).
    to be stacked against (someone)
    The Government was accused of stacking the parliamentary committee.
    • 2017 July 26, Lindsay Murdoch, “Yingluck Shinawatra, Thailand's first female PM, faces financial ruin and jail”, in The Sydney Morning Herald‎[3]:
      In 2015 the country's military-stacked national assembly impeached her and banned her from political office over the scheme, which her government introduced after she had campaigned in 2011 promising to support the rural poor.
    • 2021 July 14, David A. Graham, “Biden Is Speaking to an America That Doesn’t Exist”, in The Atlantic‎[4]:
      Many citizens support the recent attacks on democracy, and those who don’t face a system stacked against them.
  4. (transitive, poker) To take all the money another player currently has on the table.
    I won Jill's last $100 this hand; I stacked her!
  5. (transitive, US, Australia, slang) To crash; to fall.
    Jim couldn′t make it today as he stacked his car on the weekend.
    • 1975, Laurie Clancy, A Collapsible Man, Outback Press, page 43,
      Miserable phone calls from Windsor police station or from Russell Street. ‘Mum, I′ve stacked the car; could you get me a lawyer?’, the middle-class panacea for all diseases.
    • 1984, Jack Hibberd, A Country Quinella: Two Celebration Plays, page 80:
      Marmalade: Who stacked the car? (pointing to Saloon) Fangio here.
      Jock: (standing) I claim full responsibility for the second bingle.
    • 2002, Ernest Keen, Depression: Self-Consciousness, Pretending, and Guilt, page 19:
      Eventually he sideswiped a bus and forced other cars to collide, and as he finally stacked the car up on a bridge abutment, he passed out, perhaps from exhaustion, perhaps from his head hitting the windshield.
    • 2007, Martin Chipperfield, slut talk, Night Falling, 34th Parallel Publishing, US, Trade Paperback, page 100,
      oh shit danny, i stacked the car
      ran into sally, an old school friend
      you stacked the car?
      so now i need this sally′s address
      for the insurance, danny says
    Synonyms: smash, wreck
  6. (gaming) 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.
  7. (aviation, transitive) To place (aircraft) into a holding pattern.
  8. (informal, intransitive) To collect precious metal in the form of various small objects such as coins and bars.
  9. (printing) To have excessive ink transfer.
    Antonym: skip

Derived terms

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Translations

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Anagrams

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Middle English

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Etymology 1

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See stak.

Noun

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stack

  1. Alternative form of stak

Etymology 2

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See stake.

Noun

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stack

  1. Alternative form of stake

Portuguese

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Etymology

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Unadapted borrowing from English stack.

Noun

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stack f (plural stacks)

  1. (ultimate frisbee) stack

Swedish

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Etymology

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From Old Norse stakkr, from Proto-Germanic *stakkaz.

Noun

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stack c

  1. a stack (e.g. of hay), a pile (e.g. of manure)
  2. an anthill
    Synonym: myrstack
  3. a stack (in computer memory)

Usage notes

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Usually appears in compounds like myrstack (“anthill”) and höstack (“haystack”). An unqualified stack would usually be understood as an anthill.

Declension

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Declension of stack
nominative genitive
singular indefinite stack stacks
definite stacken stackens
plural indefinite stackar stackars
definite stackarna stackarnas
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See also

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Verb

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stack

  1. past indicative of sticka

Anagrams

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