• IPA: /kɹaʊd/

crowd (crowds, present participle crowding; 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

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

   • 1911, Thomas Babington Macaulay, “[https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Bunyan,_John Bunyan, John]”, in 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica:

     10

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, William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: Printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358 ↗, [Act IV, scene ii]:

     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.

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.

• French: se précipiter
• Portuguese: pressionar

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.
   • 1849, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], published 1850, OCLC 3968433 ↗, (please specify ):

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     To fool the crowd with glorious lies.

   • 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

• French: foule
• German: Gedränge, Menge, Volk (colloquial)
• Italian: folla, turba, torma, fiumana, stuolo, massa, moltitudine
• Portuguese: multidão
• Russian: толпа́
• Spanish: muchedumbre, turba, multitud, montón, vulgo

• French: monceau
• German: Haufen
• Italian: mucchio
• Portuguese: pilha, monte
• Russian: ку́ча
• Spanish: montón, multitud, amasijo

• Portuguese: massa, povo, plebe, ralé
• Russian: толпа́

crowd (plural crowds)

1. (obsolete) Alternative form of crwth
   • 1600, Ben Jonson, Cynthia's Revels

     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

crowd (crowds, present participle crowding; past and past participle crowded)

1. (obsolete, intransitive) To play on a crowd; to fiddle.

   • Fiddlers, crowd on.