What is the origin of the term “heap” for the free store?

Question

I am trying to find the official (or a good enough) reason that the free store is commonly referred to as the heap.

Except for the fact that it grows from the end of

Answer 1

It's named a heap for the contrasting image it conjures up to that of a stack.

• In a stack of items, items sit one on top of the other in the order they were placed there, and you can only remove the top one (without toppling the whole thing over).

  

• In a heap, there is no particular order to the way items are placed. You can reach in and remove items in any order because there is no clear 'top' item.

  

It does a fairly good job of describing the two ways of allocating and freeing memory in a stack and a heap. Yum!