Word.ws English Dictionary

overcrowding

overcrowding is the present participle and gerund of overcrowd.

Meaning of overcrowd

Verb

overcrowd (third-person singular simple present overcrowds, present participle overcrowding, simple past and past participle overcrowded)

  1. To fill beyond reasonable limits, with people, animals, objects or information.
    • The host of business travellers between Bishops Stortford and London would scarcely take kindly to devious routing via the Southbury line; on the other hand, it is not desirable that they should overcrowd the business trains to and from Cambridge.1961 January, “The North-East London electrification of the Great Eastern Line”, in Trains Illustrated, page 19

Noun

overcrowding (countable and uncountable, plural overcrowdings)

  1. The situation where a space holds more occupants than it can comfortably accommodate.
    • […] there are sublettings, overcrowdings of lands, clearances, and emigrations going on; and want of employment, with consequent destitution and wretchedness is the complaint of the majority of the inhabitants.1846, Thomas Campbell Foster, Letters on the Condition of the People of Ireland, page 270
    • An extra rush-hour train has eased overcrowding of the former 5.39 p.m. to Salisbury; this now leaves at 5.43 and an additional electric service to Alton departs at 5.39 p.m.1961 October, “The winter timetables of British Railways: Southern Region”, in Trains Illustrated, pages 593–594

Forms of overcrowding

pluralovercrowdings

Questions about overcrowding

What does overcrowding mean?
Overcrowding means the situation where a space holds more occupants than it can comfortably accommodate.
What is overcrowding the present participle and gerund of?
Overcrowding is the present participle and gerund of overcrowd.
What part of speech is overcrowding?
Overcrowding is a noun.
What is the plural of overcrowding?
The plural of overcrowding is overcrowdings.

Words near overcrowding in the dictionary

  1. overcrowded
  2. overcrowdedly
  3. overcrowdedness
  4. overcrowder
  5. overcrowders
  6. overcrowding
  7. overcrowdings
  8. overcrowds
  9. overcrowed
  10. overcrowing
  11. overcrows

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: overcrowding (page history and authors); overcrowd (page history and authors). 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:

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