pilled

1. 1
   adjective

   Of woven fabric, having formed small matted balls of fiber across its surface from wear.

   After months of wear, the jacket's elbows were noticeably pilled.

   Quality merino resists becoming pilled even under daily use.

   Note

   A textile word for surface wear rather than real damage: the fibers have rolled into small matted balls instead of tearing away. It is gradable, so a fabric can be slightly pilled, or more pilled at the elbows than at the cuffs. It sits naturally before a noun (a pilled blanket). The process itself belongs to the past tense of the verb: the blanket pilled, and now it is pilled.

2. 2
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of pill.

   The wool blanket pilled noticeably after the first cold season.

   Cheap upholstery pilled wherever people leaned against it.

   Note

   One spelling serves several unrelated verbs. For fabric it is intransitive (the sweater pilled). For medicating someone it takes an object (the vet pilled the cat), and so does the online sense of persuading (a podcast pilled him). It also covers a dated British slang verb meaning to blackball and an obsolete one meaning to peel. Passives like got pilled shade into the "believing" adjective.

3. 3
   adjectiveslang

   Having come to firmly believe in a particular idea or worldview, framed as the effect of swallowing a figurative pill.

   His brother got pilled by a podcast and now sees conspiracies everywhere.

   Once you're pilled, the old explanations stop making any sense to you.

   Similarradicalized

   Note

   Internet slang that usually travels with a prefix naming the belief. Caleb Madison, writing in The Atlantic in 2021, explains that being X-pilled meant becoming an enthusiastic lover of X. His title, "How We Swallowed Redpilled Whole," points to redpilled as the model for the rest. Used bare, pilled leaves the belief to context, so add the prefix whenever the worldview matters.

4. 4
   adjectiveslang

   Intoxicated from taking pills, especially recreational drugs.

   The singer arrived pilled and could hardly finish the set.

   They spent the whole night pilled at the warehouse party.

   Similarhigh, stoned, wasted

   Oppositesober

   Note

   Drug slang with a long life. In Alan Bestic's Turn Me on Man (1966) a speaker boasts he was "pilled to the gills" on purple hearts. "Irish" Jack Lyons, quoted in Casey Harison's Feedback: The Who and Their Generation (2014), uses it the same way. It also appears as pilled-up. Keep it for casual talk; in neutral writing about drug use, "intoxicated" or "high" is the safer choice.

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