PILLING

Verb

pilling

present participle of pill

Noun

pilling (plural pillings)

Balls of fibre formed on clothing through usage, often called pill or pills.

Proper noun

Pilling (countable and uncountable, plural Pillings)

A surname.

A village in Wyre borough, Lancashire, England (OS grid ref SD4048).

Statistics

• According to the 2010 United States Census, Pilling is the 20047th most common surname in the United States, belonging to 1334 individuals. Pilling is most common among White (95.05%) individuals.

Source: Wiktionary


PILL

Pill, n. Etym: [Cf. Peel skin, or Pillion.]

Definition: The peel or skin. [Obs.] "Some be covered over with crusts, or hard pills, as the locusts." Holland.

Pill, v. i.

Definition: To be peeled; to peel off in flakes.

Pill, v. t. Etym: [Cf. L. pilare to deprive of hair, and E. pill, n. (above).]

1. To deprive of hair; to make bald. [Obs.]

2. To peel; to make by removing the skin. [Jacob] pilled white streaks . . . in the rods. Gen. xxx. 37.

Pill, v. t. & i. [imp. & p. p. Pilled; p. pr. & vb. n. Pilling.] Etym: [F. piller, L. pilare; cf. It. pigliare to take. Cf. Peel to plunder.]

Definition: To rob; to plunder; to pillage; to peel. See Peel, to plunder. [Obs.] Spenser. Pillers and robbers were come in to the field to pill and to rob. Sir T. Malroy.

Pill, n. Etym: [F. pilute, L. pilula a pill, little ball, dim. of L. pila a ball. Cf. Piles.]

1. A medicine in the form of a little ball, or small round mass, to be swallowed whole.

2. Figuratively, something offensive or nauseous which must be accepted or endured. Udall. Pill beetle (Zoöl.), any small beetle of the genus Byrrhus, having a rounded body, with the head concealed beneath the thorax.

– Pill bug (Zoöl.), any terrestrial isopod of the genus Armadillo, having the habit of rolling itself into a ball when disturbed. Called also pill wood louse.

Source: Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary 1913 Edition



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Word of the Day

3 July 2025

SENSE

(noun) the faculty through which the external world is apprehended; “in the dark he had to depend on touch and on his senses of smell and hearing”


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Coffee Trivia

The expression “coffee break” was first attested in 1952 in glossy magazine advertisements by the Pan-American Coffee Bureau.

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