crowd
English
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /kɹaʊd/
Audio (US) (file) - Rhymes: -aʊd
Etymology 1
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”).
Verb
crowd (third-person singular simple present crowds, present participle crowding, simple past and past participle crowded)
- (intransitive) To press forward; to advance by pushing.
- The man crowded into the packed room.
- (intransitive) To press together or collect in numbers
- They crowded through the archway and into the park.
- Synonyms: swarm, throng, crowd in
- 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 191120697, page 141:
- [T]he whole company closed their ranks, and crowded about the fire.
- 1911, Thomas Babington Macaulay, “Bunyan, John”, in 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica:
- Images came crowding on his mind faster than he could put them into words.
- (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, 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 606515358, [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.
- (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.
- 1875, William Hickling Prescott, History of the Reign of Philip the Second, King of Spain
- (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.
- (nautical) To approach another ship too closely when it has right of way.
- (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 57395299, 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!
-
- (transitive) To press by solicitation; to urge; to dun; hence, to treat discourteously or unreasonably.
Synonyms
- becrowd (dated)
Derived terms
- crowder
- crowd in on
- crowd out
- crowd together
- crowd up
Translations
to press together in numbers
|
Noun
crowd (plural crowds)
- 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 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], “A Court Ball”, in The Squire’s Daughter, New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead and Company, published 1919, OCLC 491297620, 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.
- 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.
- (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 228732415, page 536:
- He went not, with the Crowd, to ſee a Shrine;
- 1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], OCLC 3968433, canto CXXVI, page 197:
- […] To fool the crowd with glorious lies, […]
-
- 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.
Synonyms
- (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
Derived terms
- alone in a crowd
- beat the crowd
- crowd art
- crowd catch
- crowd control
- crowd disease
- crowd-kill
- crowd manipulation
- crowd-pleaser
- crowd pleaser
- crowd-poisoning
- crowd psychology
- crowd-puller
- crowd sail
- crowd-source
- crowd surf
- crowd surfer
- crowd surfing
- crowd vetting
- crowd wave
- flash crowd
- follow the crowd
- in crowd
- in-crowd
- play to the crowd
- rent-a-crowd
- tough crowd
- wisdom of the crowd
- work the crowd
- wrong crowd
Translations
group of people
|
group of things
|
the “lower orders” of people
|
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked
|
Etymology 2
Inherited from Middle English crowde, from Welsh crwth or a Celtic cognate.
Noun
crowd (plural crowds)
- (obsolete) Alternative form of crwth
- 1600 (first performance), Benjamin Jonson [i.e., Ben Jonson], “Cynthias Revels, or The Fountayne of Selfe-Loue. […]”, in The Workes of Ben Jonson (First Folio), London: […] Will[iam] Stansby, published 1616, OCLC 960101342:
- A lackey that […] can warble upon a crowd a little.
-
- (now dialectal) A fiddle.
- 1663, [Samuel Butler], “The Second Part of Hudibras”, in Hudibras. The First and Second Parts. […], London: […] John Martyn and Henry Herringman, […], published 1678, OCLC 890163163; republished in A[lfred] R[ayney] Waller, editor, Hudibras: Written in the Time of the Late Wars, Cambridge: University Press, 1905, OCLC 963614346, canto II, page 129:
- That keep their Consciences in Cases, / As Fiddlers do their Crowds and Bases, […]
- 1820, Walter Scott, chapter XI, in Ivanhoe; a Romance. […], volume III, Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […], OCLC 230694662, page 286:
- […] wandering palmers, hedge-priests, Saxon minstrels, and Welsh bards, were muttering prayers, and extracting mistuned dirges from their harps, crowds, and rotes.
-
Derived terms
- crowder
Verb
crowd (third-person singular simple present crowds, present participle crowding, simple past and past participle crowded)
- (obsolete, intransitive) To play on a crowd; to fiddle.
- 1656, Thomas Middleton, William Rowley, and Philip Massinger, The Old Law
- Fiddlers, crowd on, crowd on.
- 1656, Thomas Middleton, William Rowley, and Philip Massinger, The Old Law
References
crowd in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
Anagrams
- c-word