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Original · left

Heap (pile)

An untidy pile or mound of discarded rubbish, garden trimmings, or loose gravel.

First in use: ancient / pre-modern
Duplicate · right

Heap (memory)

A large, unstructured region of system memory dedicated to dynamic runtime allocations requested by software programs.

First in use: the 1960s

Heap / Heap (pile) / Heap (memory)

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A pile of junk vs. malloc.

Which meaning of Heap is the original, and which one is the duplicate riding on its name? Heap (pile) came first (ancient / pre-modern). Heap (memory) arrived in the 1960s. The data below shows which one owns the word now.

Wikipedia pageviews since 2015

Heap (pile)Heap (memory)
English Wikipedia pageviews since July 2015 load here.

Duplicate's share of attention

Green line = duplicate's % · above 60 it owns the word · below 40 the original does

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The case for each meaning

Sourced definitions, usage stats and quotes

Original · ancient / pre-modern

Heap (pile)

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Duplicate · the 1960s

Heap (memory)

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More duplicated terms

Programming & software