[syn: stack, pile, heap]
3. arrange the order of so as to increase one's winning chances;
- Example: "stack the deck of cards"
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:
Stack \Stack\ (st[a^]k), n. [Icel. stakkr; akin to Sw. stack,
Dan. stak. Cf. Stake.]
1. A large and to some degree orderly pile of hay, grain,
straw, or the like, usually of a nearly conical form, but
sometimes rectangular or oblong, contracted at the top to
a point or ridge, and sometimes covered with thatch.
[1913 Webster]
But corn was housed, and beans were in the stack.
--Cowper.
[1913 Webster]
2. Hence: An orderly pile of any type of object, indefinite
in quantity; -- used especially of piles of wood. A stack
is usually more orderly than a pile
[1913 Webster +PJC]
Against every pillar was a stack of billets above a
man's height. --Bacon.
[1913 Webster]
3. Specifically: A pile of wood containing 108 cubic feet.
[Eng.]
[1913 Webster]
4. Hence: A large quantity; as, a stack of cash. [Informal]
[PJC]
5. (Arch.)
(a) A number of flues embodied in one structure, rising
above the roof. Hence:
(b) Any single insulated and prominent structure, or
upright pipe, which affords a conduit for smoke; as,
the brick smokestack of a factory; the smokestack of a
steam vessel.
[1913 Webster]
6. (Computer programming)
(a) A section of memory in a computer used for temporary
storage of data, in which the last datum stored is the
first retrieved.
(b) A data structure within random-access memory used to
simulate a hardware stack; as, a push-down stack.
[PJC]
7. pl. The section of a library containing shelves which hold
books less frequently requested.
[PJC]
Stack of arms (Mil.), a number of muskets or rifles set up
together, with the bayonets crossing one another, forming
a sort of conical self-supporting pile.
to blow one's stacks to become very angry and lose one's
self-control, and especially to display one's fury by
shouting.
[1913 Webster +PJC]
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:
Stack \Stack\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Stacked (st[a^]kt); p. pr.
& vb. n. Stacking.] [Cf. Sw. stacka, Dan. stakke. See
Stack, n.]
1. To lay in a conical or other pile; to make into a large
pile; as, to stack hay, cornstalks, or grain; to stack or
place wood.
[1913 Webster]
2. Specifically: To place in a vertical arrangement so that
each item in a pile is resting on top of another item in
the pile, except for the bottom item; as, to stack the
papers neatly on the desk; to stack the bricks.
[PJC]
3. To select or arrange dishonestly so as to achieve an
unfair advantage; as, to stack a deck of cards; to stack a
jury with persons prejudiced against the defendant.
[PJC]
To stack arms (Mil.), to set up a number of muskets or
rifles together, with the bayonets crossing one another,
and forming a sort of conical pile.
[1913 Webster]
WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006):
stack
n 1: an orderly pile
2: (often followed by `of') a large number or amount or extent;
"a batch of letters"; "a deal of trouble"; "a lot of money";
"he made a mint on the stock market"; "see the rest of the
winners in our huge passel of photos"; "it must have cost
plenty"; "a slew of journalists"; "a wad of money" [syn:
batch, deal, flock, good deal, great deal,
hatful, heap, lot, mass, mess, mickle, mint,
mountain, muckle, passel, peck, pile, plenty,
pot, quite a little, raft, sight, slew, spate,
stack, tidy sum, wad]
3: a list in which the next item to be removed is the item most
recently stored (LIFO) [syn: push-down list, push-down
stack, stack]
4: a large tall chimney through which combustion gases and smoke
can be evacuated [syn: smokestack, stack]
5: a storage device that handles data so that the next item to
be retrieved is the item most recently stored (LIFO) [syn:
push-down storage, push-down store, stack]
v 1: load or cover with stacks; "stack a truck with boxes"
2: arrange in stacks; "heap firewood around the fireplace";
"stack your books up on the shelves" [syn: stack, pile,
heap]
3: arrange the order of so as to increase one's winning chances;
"stack the deck of cards"
Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0:
234 Moby Thesaurus words for "stack":
abundance, accumulate, accumulation, add up, adulterate,
agglomerate, agglomeration, aggregate, aggregation, agree, amass,
amassment, amount, anger, anthill, archives, armory, array,
arsenal, atelier, attic, backlog, bag, bale, bank, bank up, barrel,
basement, batch, bay, bin, bonded warehouse, book end,
book support, book table, book tray, book truck, bookcase,
bookholder, bookrack, bookrest, bookshelf, bookstack, bookstand,
bottle, box, budget, bundle, bunker, burden, buttery, can,
cargo dock, cellar, check out, chest, chimney, clamp, closet, cock,
collect, collection, commissariat, commissary, compare,
conservatory, considerable, cook, cornucopia, crate, crib,
cumulation, cupboard, deal, deposit, depository, depot, dock,
doctor, drawer, drift, dump, dune, embankment, exchequer, fake,
fill, flue, flue pipe, folder, folio, freight, fumarole, funnel,
glory hole, gobs, godown, good deal, great deal, haycock, haymow,
hayrick, haystack, heap, heap up, heaps, hill, hoard, hold, host,
hutch, inventory, jibe, juggle, lade, larder, lashings, library,
load, loads, locker, loft, lot, lots, lumber room, lumberyard,
magasin, magazine, make sense, manipulate, mass, material,
materials, materiel, measure up, mess, mint, molehill, mound,
mountain, mow, multitude, munitions, number, office, oodles, pack,
pack away, peck, pile, pile up, piles, plant, plenitude, plenty,
pocket, portfolio, pot, profusion, provisionment, provisions,
pyramid, quantity, quite a little, rack, raft, rafts, rage, rant,
rations, repertoire, repertory, repository, reservoir, retouch,
revolving bookcase, rick, rig, sack, sail loft, salt, scads, sea,
shelf, ship, sight, slew, slews, smokeshaft, smokestack, snowdrift,
sophisticate, spate, squirrel away, stack room, stack up, stacks,
stash, stock, stock room, stock-in-trade, stockpile, storage,
store, storehouse, storeroom, stores, stovepipe, stow, studio,
study, supplies, supply, supply base, supply depot, supply on hand,
swarm, tamper with, tank, throng, tidy sum, treasure,
treasure house, treasure room, treasury, vat, vault, volume, wad,
wads, warehouse, whole slew, wine cellar, workroom
The Jargon File (version 4.4.7, 29 Dec 2003):
stack
n.
The set of things a person has to do in the future. One speaks of the next
project to be attacked as having risen to the top of the stack. ?I'm afraid
I've got real work to do, so this'll have to be pushed way down on my
stack.? ?I haven't done it yet because every time I pop my stack something
new gets pushed.? If you are interrupted several times in the middle of a
conversation, ?My stack overflowed? means ?I forget what we were talking
about.? The implication is that more items were pushed onto the stack than
could be remembered, so the least recent items were lost. The usual
physical example of a stack is to be found in a cafeteria: a pile of plates
or trays sitting on a spring in a well, so that when you put one on the top
they all sink down, and when you take one off the top the rest spring up a
bit. See also push and pop.
(The Art of Computer Programming, second edition, vol. 1, p. 236) says:
Many people who realized the importance of stacks and queues
independently have given other names to these structures: stacks have
been called push-down lists, reversion storages, cellars, nesting
stores, piles, last-in-first-out (?LIFO?) lists, and even yo-yo lists!
The term ?stack? was originally coined by Edsger Dijkstra, who was quite
proud of it.
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (30 December 2018):
stack
FILO
last-in first-out
LIFO
(See below for synonyms) A data structure for
storing items which are to be accessed in last-in first-out
order.
The operations on a stack are to create a new stack, to "push"
a new item onto the top of a stack and to "pop" the top item
off. Error conditions are raised by attempts to pop an empty
stack or to push an item onto a stack which has no room for
further items (because of its implementation).
Most processors include support for stacks in their
instruction set architectures. Perhaps the most common use
of stacks is to store subroutine arguments and return
addresses. This is usually supported at the machine code
level either directly by "jump to subroutine" and "return from
subroutine" instructions or by auto-increment and
auto-decrement addressing modes, or both. These allow a
contiguous area of memory to be set aside for use as a stack
and use either a special-purpose register or a general
purpose register, chosen by the user, as a stack pointer.
The use of a stack allows subroutines to be recursive since
each call can have its own calling context, represented by a
stack frame or activation record. There are many other
uses. The programming language Forth uses a data stack in
place of variables when possible.
Although a stack may be considered an object by users,
implementations of the object and its access details differ.
For example, a stack may be either ascending (top of stack is
at highest address) or descending. It may also be "full" (the
stack pointer points at the top of stack) or "empty" (the
stack pointer points just past the top of stack, where the
next element would be pushed). The full/empty terminology is
used in the Acorn Risc Machine and possibly elsewhere.
In a list-based or functional language, a stack might be
implemented as a linked list where a new stack is an empty
list, push adds a new element to the head of the list and pop
splits the list into its head (the popped element) and tail
(the stack in its modified form).
At MIT, pdl used to be a more common synonym for stack,
and this may still be true. Knuth ("The Art of Computer
Programming", second edition, vol. 1, p. 236) says:
Many people who realised the importance of stacks and queues
independently have given other names to these structures:
stacks have been called push-down lists, reversion storages,
cellars, dumps, nesting stores, piles, last-in first-out
("LIFO") lists, and even yo-yo lists!
[Jargon File]
(1995-04-10)