crowd

/ˈkɹæʊ̯d/UK/ˈkɹaʊ̯d/

crowd verb: to press forward; to advance by pushing. Also the alternative form of crwth.

Verb (1)

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.
Synonyms:

barge
(intransitive) 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 in Alexander Chalmers, editor, The Spectator; a...
Synonyms:

swarm, throng, crowd in, crush, pile, horde
(transitive) 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, […]. Epilogue.”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […]...
(transitive) 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
(often, transitive) 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
To approach another ship too closely when it has right of way.
(transitive) 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 peril; her only friend her bitterest foe!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, page 118
(transitive) To press by solicitation; to urge; to dun; hence, to treat discourteously or unreasonably.

Noun (1)

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.
- 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.1892, Walter Besant, “Prologue: Who is Edmund Gray?”, in The Ivory Gate […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC, page 16
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.
Synonyms:

aggregation, cluster, group, mass
(with-definite-article) 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 536
- […]To fool the crowd with glorious lies,[…]1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], “Canto CXXVI”, in In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 197
Synonyms:

everyone, general public, hoi polloi, masses, rabble, mob, tag-rag, unwashed
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.

Noun (2)

crowd (plural crowds)

(dialectal) 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. […], London: […] John Martyn and Henry Herringman, […], published 1678...
- […]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, chapter XI, in Ivanhoe; a Romance. […], volume III, Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […], →OCLC, page...

Verb (2)

crowd (third-person singular simple present crowds, present participle crowding, simple past and past participle crowded)

(intransitive, obsolete) To play on a crowd; to fiddle.
- Fiddlers, crowd on, crowd on.1656, Thomas Middleton, William Rowley, Philip Massinger, The Old Law

Also used as

crowd is also the alternative form of crwth.

crowd meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

crowd in Hindi

to press together in numbers: भीड़ bhīṛ
group of people: जनता jantā, भीड़ bhīṛ

crowd in Tamil

to press together in numbers: நசுக்கு nacukku
group of people: கூட்டம் kūṭṭam
the “lower orders” of people: சாமானியர் cāmāṉiyar

crowd in Marathi

group of people: जमाव jamāv, समुह samuh, गर्दी gardī

crowd in Urdu

group of people: بھیڑ bhīṛ, جنتا jantā

More languagesFewer languages

crowd in Bengali: ঘেঁষা ghẽśa
crowd in Telugu: గుంపు gumpu, బృందము br̥ndamu
crowd in Kannada: ಜನಜಂಗುಳಿ, ಜನಸಂದಣಿ, ಜನಸಮೂಹ
crowd in Nepali: जमात jamāt, भीडभाड bhīḍabhāḍ
crowd in Tagalog: kumpulan, libumbon
crowd in Arabic: حَشْد ḥašd, زَحْمَة zaḥma, كَوْم kawm
crowd in Persian: چپاندن čapândan, جمعیت jam'iyyat, انبوه anbuh
crowd in Thai: มหาชน má-hǎa-chon, กอง gɔɔng
crowd in Vietnamese: đám đông
crowd in Myanmar: လူစုလူဝေး lucu.luwe:

Examples of crowd in a sentence

Images came crowding on his mind faster than he could put them into words.1911, Thomas Babington Macaulay, “Bunyan, John”, in 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica:
Maybe it was time I joined the crowd and bought a few of those for my own office.2015, Cameron Bane, Pitfall:

All 40 example sentences with crowd

Synonyms of crowd

20 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of crowd

Forms of crowd

Verb
third-person singular present	crowds
present participle	crowding
past participle	crowded
past	crowded
Noun
plural	crowds

Past tense of crowd: crowded

Plural of crowd: crowds

Origin of crowd

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)).

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

Phrases with crowd

8 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with crowd

20 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about crowd

What does crowd mean?: Crowd means to press forward; to advance by pushing.
What is crowd in Hindi?: Crowd in Hindi is भीड़ (bhīṛ), जनता (jantā). See Crowd meaning in Hindi.
How do you use crowd in a sentence?: Images came crowding on his mind faster than he could put them into words.
What part of speech is crowd?: Crowd can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce crowd?: Crowd is pronounced /ˈkɹaʊ̯d/ (UK).
What is the past tense of crowd?: The past tense of crowd is crowded.

Words near crowd in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: crowd (page history and authors); crowd (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-crowd.ogg.

Cite this entry: “crowd.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/crowd. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.