crowd

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

Noun

  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.
    • 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. -...
    • 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...
  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. The so-called lower orders of people; the populace; the vulgar.
    • He went not, with the Crowd, to ſee a Shrine; - 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...
    • […]To fool the crowd with glorious lies,[…] - 1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], “Canto CXXVI”, in In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 197:
  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.
    • Maybe it was time I joined the crowd and bought a few of those for my own office. - 2015, Cameron Bane, Pitfall:

Origin

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”). (group of people, mob): Compare typologically throng (<<~ Proto-Germanic *þrinhwaną); Czech dav (akin to Russian дави́ть (davítʹ), да́вка (dávka)); Polish ciżba, ścisk (<~ ciskać, akin to ти́скать (tískatʹ)); Polish tłok, Russian толчея́ (tolčejá) (akin to толка́ть (tolkátʹ)).

Forms

crowds

Synonyms

aggregation cluster group mass audience multitude public swarm throng horde everyone general public hoi polloi masses rabble mob tag-rag unwashed assemblage congregation crowd flock huddle legion

Hypernyms

group lot

Hyponyms

audience spectators mob rabble scrum swarm host

Related

masses populace public assemble

Derived

alone in a crowd anticrowd beat the crowd capacity crowd crowd art crowd catch crowd control crowd disease crowdest crowdfactoring crowdfund crowdfunding crowd-kill crowdlending crowdless crowdlike crowd manipulation crowd pleaser crowd-pleaser crowdpleaser crowd-pleasing crowd-poisoning crowd psychology crowd puller

Noun alt of, alternative

  1. Alternative form of crwth.
    • A lackey that […] can warble upon a crowd a little. - 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),...
  2. A fiddle.
    • That keep their Consciences in Cases, / As Fiddlers do their Crowds and Bases,[…] - 1663 (indicated as 1664), [Samuel Butler], “The Second Part of Hudibras. Canto II.”, in Hudibras. The First and Second Parts. […],...
    • […]wandering palmers, hedge-priests, Saxon minstrels, and Welsh bards, were muttering prayers, and extracting mistuned dirges from their harps, crowds, and rotes. - 1819 December 20 (indicated as 1820), Walter Scott,...

Origin

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

Forms

crowds

Synonyms

assemblage congregation crowd flock horde huddle legion mass multitude press slew throng

Hypernyms

group lot

Hyponyms

audience spectators mob rabble scrum swarm host

Related

masses populace public assemble

Derived

crowder

Verb Entry 3

  1. To press forward; to advance by pushing.
    • The man crowded into the packed room.

    Synonyms: barge

  2. To press together or collect in numbers.
    • They crowded through the archway and into the park.
    • [T]he whole company closed their ranks, and crowded about the fire. - 1711 March 24 (Gregorian calendar), [Joseph Addison; Richard Steele et al.], “TUESDAY, March 14, 1710–1711”, in The Spectator, number 12; republished...
    • Images came crowding on his mind faster than he could put them into words. - 1911, Thomas Babington Macaulay, “Bunyan, John”, in 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica:

    Synonyms: swarm throng crowd in crush pile horde

  3. To press or drive together, especially into a small space; to cram.
    • He tried to crowd too many cows into the cow-pen.
    • […]The Time (miſ-order’d) doth in common ſence / Crowd vs, and cruſh vs, to this monſtrous Forme, / To hold our ſafetie vp. - c. 1596–1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Fourth, […]....
  4. To fill by pressing or thronging together
    • The balconies and verandas were crowded with spectators, anxious to behold their future sovereign. - 1875, William Hickling Prescott, History of the Reign of Philip the Second, King of Spain:
  5. To push, to press, to shove.
    • They tried to crowd her off the sidewalk.
    • Alexis's mementos and numerous dance trophies were starting to crowd her out of her little bedroom. - 2006, Lanna Nakone, Every Child Has a Thinking Style, →ISBN, page 73:
  6. To approach another ship too closely when it has right of way.
  7. To carry excessive sail in the hope of moving faster.
    • 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...
  8. To press by solicitation; to urge; to dun; hence, to treat discourteously or unreasonably.

Forms

crowds crowding crowded

Synonyms

becrowd

Derived

crowder crowdingly crowd in on crowd out crowd together crowd up outcrowd overcrowd undercrowd

Verb intransitive, obsolete

  1. To play on a crowd; to fiddle.
    • Fiddlers, crowd on, crowd on. - 1656, Thomas Middleton, William Rowley, Philip Massinger, The Old Law:

Forms

crowds crowding crowded