CROSS AND PILE

Definition: CROSS AND PILE

CROSS AND PILE

1. A game with money, at which it is put to chance whether a coin shall fall with that side up which bears the cross, or the other, which is called pile, or reverse; the game called heads or tails.

Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

Specialty Definition: CROSS AND PILE

Domain	Definition
Literature	Cross and Pile Money; pitch and toss. Hilaire le Gai tells us that some of the ancient French coins had a cross, and others a column, on the reverse; the column was called a pile, from which comes our word "pillar," and the phrase "pile-driving." Scaliger says that some of the old French coins had a ship on the reverse, the arms of Paris, and that pile means "a ship," whence our word "pilot." "A man may now justifiably throw up cross and pile for his opinions." - Locke: Human Understanding. Cross or pile. Heads or tails. The French say pile ou face. The "face" or cross was the obverse of the coin, the "pile" was the reverse; but at a later period the cross was transferred to the reverse, as in our florins, and the obverse bore a "head" or "poll." "Marriage is worse than cross I win, pile you lose." Shadwell: Epsom Wells. Cross nor pile. I have neither cross nor pile. Not a penny in the world. The French phrase is, "N'avoir ni croix ni pile " (to have neither one sort of coin nor another). "Whacum had neither cross nor pile." Butler: Hudibras, part ii. 3. Source: Brewer's Dictionary.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Synonyms within Context: CROSS AND PILE

Context	Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus).
Intention	Drawing lots; sortilegy, sortition; sortes, sortes Virgilianae; rouge et noir, hazard, ante, chuck-a-luck, crack-loo, craps, faro, roulette, pitch and toss, chuck, farthing, cup tossing, heads or tails cross and pile, poker-dice; wager; bet, betting; gambling; the turf.
Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus.

Anagrams: CROSS AND PILE

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams
	Words within the letters "a-c-d-e-i-l-n-o-p-r-s-s"
	-1 letter: cordialness, scorpaenids.
	-2 letters: placidness, porcelains, scorpaenid.
	-3 letters: acridness, acroleins, aspersion, caponiers, caprioled, caprioles, censorial, clarioned, colanders, conelrads, considers, conspired, conspires, croplands, diaspores, diocesans, discloser, dispersal, displaces, dropsical, endocarps, endosarcs, idocrases, inclasped, inclosers, incorpsed, incorpses, incrossed, ironclads, islanders, licensors, palinodes, personals, picadores, polarised, polarises, porcelain, prescinds, procaines, proscenia, psoralens, rapidness, replicons, sandpiles, scenarios, scorepads.
	Words containing the letters "a-c-d-e-i-l-n-o-p-r-s-s"
	+3 letters: paradoxicalness.
	+5 letters: paradoxicalnesses.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro.