Definition of "crowd"

crowd¹

/kɹaʊd/

verb
third-person singular simple present crowds, present participle crowding, simple past and past participle crowded
1. (intransitive) To press forward; to advance by pushing.
2. (intransitive) To press together or collect in numbers
  Quotations
  [T]he whole company closed their ranks, and crowded about the fire.
  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, page 141
  Images came crowding on his mind faster than he could put them into words.
  1911, Thomas Babington Macaulay, “Bunyan, John”, in 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica‎
3. (transitive) To press or drive together, especially into a small space; to cram.
  Quotations
  […] 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, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act IV, scene ii], page 91, column 1
4. (transitive) To fill by pressing or thronging together
  Quotations
  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
5. (transitive, often used with "out of" or "off") To push, to press, to shove.
  Quotations
  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, page 73
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.
  Quotations
  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, page 118
8. (transitive) To press by solicitation; to urge; to dun; hence, to treat discourteously or unreasonably.
noun
plural crowds
1. A group of people congregated or collected into a close body without order.
  Quotations
  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, […], page 16
  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.
  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, page 9
2. Several things collected or closely pressed together; also, some things adjacent to each other.
3. (with definite article) The so-called lower orders of people; the populace, vulgar.
  Quotations
  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, […], page 536
  […] To fool the crowd with glorious lies, […]
  1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], canto CXXVI, page 197
4. A group of people united or at least characterised by a common interest.
  Quotations
  Maybe it was time I joined the crowd and bought a few of those for my own office.
  2015, Cameron Bane, Pitfall

crowd²

/kɹaʊd/

noun
plural crowds
1. (obsolete) Alternative form of crwth
  Quotations
  A lackey that […] can warble upon a crowd a little.
  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
2. (now dialectal) A fiddle.
  Quotations
  That keep their Consciences in Cases, / As Fiddlers do their Crowds and Bases, […]
  1663, [Samuel Butler], “The Second Part of Hudibras”, in Hudibras. The First and Second Parts. […], London: […] John Martyn and Henry Herringman, […], published 1678; republished in A[lfred] R[ayney] Waller, editor, Hudibras: Written in the Time of the Late Wars, Cambridge: University Press, 1905, canto II, page 129
  […] wandering palmers, hedge-priests, Saxon minstrels, and Welsh bards, were muttering prayers, and extracting mistuned dirges from their harps, crowds, and rotes.
  1820, Walter Scott, chapter XI, in Ivanhoe; a Romance. […], volume III, Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […], page 286
verb
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.
  Quotations
  Fiddlers, crowd on, crowd on.
  1656, Thomas Middleton, William Rowley, Philip Massinger, The Old Law

Definition of "crowd"

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