crowd

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English

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /kɹaʊd/
  • Audio (US)(file)
  • Rhymes: -aʊd

Etymology 1

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

Verb

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
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      The whole company crowded about the fire.
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      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.
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      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.
Derived terms
Translations

Noun

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.
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      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.
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      To fool the crowd with glorious lies.
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      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.
Synonyms
Derived terms
Translations
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

Etymology 2

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

Noun

crowd (plural crowds)

  1. (obsolete) Alternative form of crwth
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      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
Derived terms

Verb

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.
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      Fiddlers, crowd on.

References

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “crowd”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

Anagrams

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