crowd

verb

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.”

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

   “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.”

   “[…]The Time (miſ-order’d) doth in common ſence / Crowd vs, and cruſh vs, to this monſtrous Forme, / To hold our ſafetie vp.”

4. (transitive)To fill by pressing or thronging together

   “The balconies and verandas were crowded with spectators, anxious to behold their future sovereign.”

5. (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.”

6. To approach another ship too closely when it has right of way.
7. (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!”

8. (transitive)To press by solicitation; to urge; to dun; hence, to treat discourteously or unreasonably.
9. (intransitive, obsolete)To play on a crowd; to fiddle.

   “Fiddlers, crowd on, crowd on.”

noun

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.”

   “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.”

   “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; the vulgar.

   “He went not, with the Crowd, to ſee a Shrine;”

   “[…]To fool the crowd with glorious lies,[…]”

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.”

   “We're concerned that our daughter has fallen in with a bad crowd.”

   “Maybe it was time I joined the crowd and bought a few of those for my own office.”

5. (alt-of, alternative, obsolete)Alternative form of crwth.

   “A lackey that […] can warble upon a crowd a little.”

6. (dialectal)A fiddle.

   “That keep their Consciences in Cases, / As Fiddlers do their Crowds and Bases,[…]”

   “[…]wandering palmers, hedge-priests, Saxon minstrels, and Welsh bards, were muttering prayers, and extracting mistuned dirges from their harps, crowds, and rotes.”