crowd

• IPA^(key): /kɹaʊd/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -aʊd

From Middle English crouden, from Old English crūdan, from Proto-West Germanic *krūdan, from Proto-Germanic *krūdaną, *kreudaną, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *grewt- (“to push; press”). Cognate with German Low German kroden (“to push, shove”), Dutch kruien (“to push, shove”).

crowd (third-person singular simple present crowds, present participle crowding, simple past and past participle crowded)

1. (intransitive) To press forward; to advance by pushing.

   The man crowded into the packed room.

2. (intransitive) To press together or collect in numbers

   Synonyms: swarm, throng, crowd in

   They crowded through the archway and into the park.

   • 1711 March 25 (Gregorian calendar), [Joseph Addison; Richard Steele et al.], “WEDNESDAY, March 14, 1710–1711”, in The Spectator, number 12; republished in Alexander Chalmers, editor, The Spectator; a New Edition, […], volume I, New York, N.Y.: D[aniel] Appleton & Company, 1853, →OCLC, page 141:

     [T]he whole company closed their ranks, and crowded about the fire.

     The spelling has been modernized.

   • 1911, Thomas Babington Macaulay, “Bunyan, John”, in 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica‎^[1]:

     Images came crowding on his mind faster than he could put them into words.

3. (transitive) To press or drive together, especially into a small space; to cram.

   He tried to crowd too many cows into the cow-pen.

   • c. 1596–1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene ii], page 91, column 1:

     […] The Time (miſ-order’d) doth in common ſence / Crowd vs, and cruſh vs, to this monſtrous Forme, / To hold our ſafetie vp.

4. (transitive) To fill by pressing or thronging together
   • 1875, William Hickling Prescott, History of the Reign of Philip the Second, King of Spain:

     The balconies and verandas were crowded with spectators, anxious to behold their future sovereign.

5. (transitive, often used with "out of" or "off") To push, to press, to shove.

   They tried to crowd her off the sidewalk.

   • 2006, Lanna Nakone, Every Child Has a Thinking Style, →ISBN, page 73:

     Alexis's mementos and numerous dance trophies were starting to crowd her out of her little bedroom.

6. (nautical) To approach another ship too closely when it has right of way.
7. (nautical, of a square-rigged ship, transitive) To carry excessive sail in the hope of moving faster.
   • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “The Lee Shore”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 118:

     With all her might she crowds all sail off shore; in so doing, fights ’gainst the very winds that fain would blow her homeward; seeks all the lashed sea’s landlessness again; for refuge’s sake forlornly rushing into peril; her only friend her bitterest foe!

8. (transitive) To press by solicitation; to urge; to dun; hence, to treat discourteously or unreasonably.

• becrowd (dated)

crowd (plural crowds)

1. A group of people congregated or collected into a close body without order.

   After the movie let out, a crowd of people pushed through the exit doors.

   • 1892, Walter Besant, “Prologue: Who is Edmund Gray?”, in The Ivory Gate […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC, page 16:

     Athelstan Arundel walked home […], foaming and raging. […] He walked the whole way, walking through crowds, and under the noses of dray-horses, carriage-horses, and cart-horses, without taking the least notice of them.

   • 1909, Archibald Marshall [pseudonym; Arthur Hammond Marshall], “A Court Ball”, in The Squire’s Daughter, New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead and Company, published 1919, →OCLC, page 9:

     He tried to persuade Cicely to stay away from the ball-room for a fourth dance. […] But she said she must go back, and when they joined the crowd again […] she found her mother standing up before the seat on which she had sat all the evening searching anxiously for her with her eyes, and her father by her side.

2. Several things collected or closely pressed together; also, some things adjacent to each other.

   There was a crowd of toys pushed beneath the couch where the children were playing.

3. (with definite article) The so-called lower orders of people; the populace, vulgar.
   • 1700, [John] Dryden, “The Character of a Good Parson; Imitated from Chaucer, and Inlarg’d”, in Fables Ancient and Modern; […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, page 536:

     He went not, with the Crowd, to ſee a Shrine;

   • 1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, Canto CXXVI, page 197:

     […] To fool the crowd with glorious lies, […]

4. A group of people united or at least characterised by a common interest.

   That obscure author's fans were a nerdy crowd which hardly ever interacted before the Internet age.

   We're concerned that our daughter has fallen in with a bad crowd.

   • 2015, Cameron Bane, Pitfall:

     Maybe it was time I joined the crowd and bought a few of those for my own office.

• (group of things): aggregation, cluster, group, mass
• (group of people): audience, group, multitude, public, swarm, throng
• (the "lower orders" of people): everyone, general public, hoi polloi, masses, rabble, mob, tag-rag, unwashed

Inherited from Middle English crowde, from Welsh crwth or a Celtic cognate.

crowd (plural crowds)

1. (obsolete) Alternative form of crwth
   • 1600 (first performance), Beniamin Ionson [i.e., Ben Jonson], “Cynthias Reuels, or The Fountayne of Selfe-Loue. […]”, in The Workes of Beniamin Ionson (First Folio), London: […] Will[iam] Stansby, published 1616, →OCLC:

     A lackey that […] can warble upon a crowd a little.

2. (now dialectal) A fiddle.
   • 1663 (indicated as 1664), [Samuel Butler], “The Second Part of Hudibras. Canto II.”, in Hudibras. The First and Second Parts. […], London: […] John Martyn and Henry Herringman, […], published 1678, →OCLC; republished in A[lfred] R[ayney] Waller, editor, Hudibras: Written in the Time of the Late Wars, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: University Press, 1905, →OCLC, page 129:

     That keep their Consciences in Cases, / As Fiddlers do their Crowds and Bases, […]

   • 1819 December 20 (indicated as 1820), Walter Scott, chapter XI, in Ivanhoe; a Romance. […], volume III, Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […], →OCLC, page 286:

     […] wandering palmers, hedge-priests, Saxon minstrels, and Welsh bards, were muttering prayers, and extracting mistuned dirges from their harps, crowds, and rotes.

• crowder

crowd (third-person singular simple present crowds, present participle crowding, simple past and past participle crowded)

1. (obsolete, intransitive) To play on a crowd; to fiddle.
   • 1656, Thomas Middleton, William Rowley, Philip Massinger, The Old Law:

     Fiddlers, crowd on, crowd on.

“crowd”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

• c-word