There was the following line in Time magazine’s (December 9) article, titled, “All Eyes on Des Moines as GOP Candidates Head into Crucial Debate.”
This week’s ad wars in Iowa presage a pile-on: Gingrich was the target of a blistering Ron Paul ad, and over the past two days Mitt Romney’s team has emerged from its defensive crouch to attack Gingrich on a variety of fronts in an effort to sow doubts about his conservative credentials, character and long career in Washington.
Though I understand “a pile-on” in “This week’s ad wars in Iowa presage a pile-on” means “a lot” or “lots of things,” I can’t tell whether it is used as the objective (noun) of “presage” or the adverb to modify presage (There is no definition of pile-on as a noun in neither Cambridge nor Merriam-Webster dictionary).
I’m afraid there wouldn’t be much difference either way I take it, but grammatically speaking, which way should I take it?