hoard

Formshoards, hoarding, hoarded

Pluralhoards

1. 1
   verbtransitive

   To gather and store up a large amount of something, usually to keep as one's own private collection.

   Some collectors hoard rare coins for decades and never show them to anyone.

   During the shortage, a few families hoarded gasoline in cans in their garages.

   Similarstockpile, amass, stash, store

   Oppositeshare, squander

   Note

   The verb is as old as the noun, from Old English hordian, and the two still sit happily together: Thomas Oswald Cockayne's Spoon and Sparrow (1861) has "hoard to you gold hoards on earth". It always takes an object, and the thing hoarded can be anything kept back in quantity: coins, gasoline, food, treasures of every kind.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A supply of something, such as food or money, that is kept hidden away.

   After their grandmother died, they found a hoard of cash stuffed inside her mattress.

   The hikers kept a small hoard of provisions buried near the cabin for emergencies.

   Similarstash, stockpile, cache, store

   Note

   The word goes straight back to Old English hord, which already meant a store of valuables put away for safekeeping or later use, a treasure. The secrecy is part of it. A stockpile can sit in plain view, but a hoard is tucked out of sight, in a mattress, under a floor or in a buried cache, whether it holds provisions, money or gold coins.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   In archaeology, a cache of valuable objects or artifacts hidden together and later found.

   A farmer plowing his field uncovered a hoard of Roman silver coins.

   Archaeologists believe the hoard was buried by a family fleeing an invasion.

   Similarcache

   Note

   Archaeologists use the word for a group of objects deliberately put away together, which sets it apart from a single lost coin or from goods buried with the dead. Silver and gold coins make up many famous finds. Whether a hoard was hidden for safekeeping and never reclaimed, or left as an offering, is a question many finds raise.

4. 4
   verbtransitive

   To keep something stored away in one's mind for some future need or use.

   Writers hoard odd phrases they overhear, saving them for a story someday.

   She hoarded every word of praise from her coach to replay on hard days.

   Similartreasure, store, save

   Note

   Memory is the storeroom here. Tennyson's In Memoriam (1850) speaks of "the hoarding sense" that gives out a sudden flash of days long gone, and Margaret Bird Steinmetz's Leaves of Life (1914) imagines a mind glad to unload its hoarded treasures as old rubbish. The verb fits words, praise, images and grudges as easily as coins.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   A projecting structure in a fortification, especially a wooden one, somewhat like the brattice and later replaced by it.

   Stone corbels below the parapet once carried a wooden hoard that ran the length of the wall.

   From the hoard, defenders could drop stones on attackers at the base of the tower.

   Note

   A different word from the hidden store, though spelled the same. It came through Old French hourd, a barrier or palisade, from a root meaning wickerwork or scaffolding, which suits a timber gallery built out from a castle or church wall. Stone galleries that later did the same job, sometimes on the very corbels that once held the hoards, were called bretèches.

Showing meanings only. Show all 7