HEAPS

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does heaps mean? 

• HEAPS (noun)
  The noun HEAPS has 1 sense:

1. a large number or amount

  Familiarity information: HEAPS used as a noun is very rare.

• HEAPS (adverb)
  The adverb HEAPS has 1 sense:

1. very much

  Familiarity information: HEAPS used as an adverb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• HEAPS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A large number or amount

Classified under:

Nouns denoting quantities and units of measure

Synonyms:

dozens; gobs; heaps; lashings; loads; lots; oodles; piles; rafts; scads; scores; slews; stacks; tons; wads

Context example:

she amassed stacks of newspapers

Hypernyms ("heaps" is a kind of...):

large indefinite amount; large indefinite quantity (an indefinite quantity that is above the average in size or magnitude)

• HEAPS (adverb)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Very much

Context example:

thanks heaps

Domain usage:

colloquialism (a colloquial expression; characteristic of spoken or written communication that seeks to imitate informal speech)

 Context examples 

There are doorways and dust-heaps for such deaths, and such despair—find one, and take your flight to Heaven!

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I'm going to write you a regular volume, for I've got heaps to tell, though I'm not a fine young lady traveling on the continent.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

My second sister, my brother's wife, and her two children, they were but ash-heaps in the smoking ruins of their house.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I expect there's heaps of skeletons there, if we looked for 'em.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Neptune is the planet of the arts but also of unconditional love, compassion, inspiration, and imagination, and will give you heaps of these good qualities at this time.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

Before a big fire lay Captain Smollett; and in a far corner, only duskily flickered over by the blaze, I beheld great heaps of coin and quadrilaterals built of bars of gold.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

And as bees cannot live when their stings are broken that was the end of the black bees, and they lay scattered thick about the Woodman, like little heaps of fine coal.

(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)

He slunk forlornly through the deserted camp, smelling the rubbish-heaps and the discarded rags and tags of the gods.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

At one table, there were traces of chemical work, various measured heaps of some white salt being laid on glass saucers, as though for an experiment in which the unhappy man had been prevented.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

That in some fields of his country there are certain shining stones of several colours, whereof the Yahoos are violently fond: and when part of these stones is fixed in the earth, as it sometimes happens, they will dig with their claws for whole days to get them out; then carry them away, and hide them by heaps in their kennels; but still looking round with great caution, for fear their comrades should find out their treasure.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)