crowd

• IPA^(key): /kɹaʊd/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -aʊd

From Middle English crouden, from Old English crūdan, from Proto-Germanic *krūdaną, *kreudaną. Cognate with Dutch kruien.

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

   They crowded through the archway and into the park.

   Synonyms: swarm, throng, crowd in

   • (Can we date this quote?) Addison

     The whole company crowded about the fire.

   • (Can we date this quote?) Macaulay

     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.

   • (Can we date this quote?) Shakespeare

     Crowd us and crush us.

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

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: A Novel, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], OCLC 16832619, 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], chapter I, in The Squire’s Daughter, London: Methuen, OCLC 12026604; republished New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1919, OCLC 491297620:

     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.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Alfred Tennyson

     To fool the crowd with glorious lies.

   • (Can we date this quote?) John Dryden

     He went not with the crowd to see a shrine.

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.

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

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

crowd (plural crowds)

1. (obsolete) Alternative form of crwth
   • (Can we date this quote?) Ben Jonson

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

2. (now dialectal) A fiddle.
   • 1819, Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe

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

   • 1684, Samuel Butler, Hudibras

     That keep their consciences in cases, / As fiddlers do with crowds and bases

• 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.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Massinger

     Fiddlers, crowd on.

• c-word