une pile, un tas

I just learned "la pile" as "battery" but see it also is used as "a pile" specifically referring to books and CD's (or music records). I know the word "un tas" as "a bunch" of things, but is "une pile" often used for books and CD's as indicated?

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Permalink Reply by Nausikaa on January 2, 2013 at 9:58am

"Pile" can be used for everything that you can stack: books, CD's, sheets, plates ... and suggests something more neat than a "tas".

Let's try with visuals:

These are "piles": here and there.

These are "tas": this one and that one.

The verbs that go with those are "empiler" and "entasser" meaning respectively "arranging to form a neat pile" and "tossing on top of each other".

"Tas" is often used as well to say that you've got a bunch of things to do "j'ai un tas de trucs à faire" and can replace "a lot" in informal speech. "Pile" can be used to mean "a lot" as well but it is much less common "j'ai une pile de devoirs à faire" = "i've got a lot of homeworks to do"

"Tas" is also a derogatory term to make fun of a person's weight.

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Permalink Reply by alan gould on January 2, 2013 at 5:17pm

Very helpful. Thanks kindly. In the spirit of being helpful rather than critical, I'll just point out that "homework" is ALWAYS singular even if you are in school and have to study several subjects that day (history, French, etc.)

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EducatorPermalink Reply by stu harris on January 4, 2013 at 5:34pm

Do you happen to know how pile has also come to mean the tails side of a coin?

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EducatorPermalink Reply by George Hunt on January 4, 2013 at 6:53pm

http://spkfrnch.wordpress.com/2010/06/25/pile-ou-face/

But where did we get tails and pile from? In English, tail is usually considered the opposite of head, as in, I can’t make head nor tail of it. As for pile, it appears to come from an Old French word that designated the underside of the hammer that strikes the coin. (Coins used to be made one by one, by hand, of course.) Nowadays, une pile can mean many things: a battery, a stack, a pile (a pillar of masonry used to hold up a dock, a bridge, or similar structure).

I also found:

Hello,
"pile" (1155) = coin servant à frapper le revers d'une monnaie. Le flan était posé sur un petit moule représentant une face en relief creux, puis on appliquait une pile portant la valeur de la pièce en creux sur la future pièce et on frappait avec un maillet, etampant ainsi la pièce des deux côtés, face du côté du moule et pile du côté du coin! (http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=112998 )