crowd

English has two words spelled crowd: the throng, from an Old English verb “to press”, and an old stringed instrument, from Welsh.^[1][2]

Pronunciation

• IPA: /kraʊd/^[3]

crowd¹ throng

Etymology

The verb is inherited from Middle English crouden,^[4][5] inherited from Old English crūdan (“to press, hasten, drive”),^[6][5][4] cognate with Middle Dutch cruden “to press, push”, Middle High German kroten “to press, oppress” and Norwegian kryda “to crowd”.^[6][5] Barnhart and Merriam-Webster also compare Middle Irish gruth “curds”, and Barnhart traces the group to Proto-Indo-European *greut- (“to press”).^[5][4] The noun is from the verb, replacing the earlier word press.^[6][5][7] It is related to curd.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old English crūdan, “to press, drive, hasten”, is recorded in 937, in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,^[5] of a ship pressing on.^[8]

Semantic evolution

In Middle English the senses “to move by pushing” and “to push one's way” arose, leading to “to congregate”,^[9][10] and Chaucer used it of jostling about 1380.^[5] The noun was used about 1300 in the now archaic sense “an act of pressing or shoving”,^[6] and as “a large group of persons” from the 1560s,^[6] 1565 in Merriam-Webster^[4] and 1567 in the OED.^[8] “Any group of persons considered in the mass” is from the 1650s,^[6] and “the masses” from 1683.^[8] The colloquial “set, lot” of people, as the wrong crowd, began in the United States (1840).^[8] Crowd-pleaser is recorded by 1924, crowd-surf by 1995 and crowdsourcing from 2006.^[6]

Timeline

• 937 – Old English crūdan, to press on.^[5][8]
• c. 1300 – noun, an act of shoving.^[6]
• c. 1380 – to jostle, in Chaucer.^[5]
• 1560s – a multitude.^[6]
• 1650s – a group considered in the mass.^[6]
• 1840 – a set of people.^[8]
• 1924 – crowd-pleaser.^[6]
• 2006 – crowdsourcing.^[6]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. A large number of people gathered together; a throng.
2. The common people; the populace.
3. A group of people with something in common: in with the wrong crowd.
4. An audience.
5. A large number of things close together.

Verb

1. To come together in large numbers; to throng.
2. To advance by pressing or shoving.
3. To fill a space by pressing together.
4. To press too close to.

Word family

• crowded
• crowdedness
• crowdsourcing

crowd² fiddle

Etymology

The instrument is inherited from Middle English crowde,^[4][2] borrowed from Middle Welsh crwth (Welsh crwth “fiddle”),^[4][2][11] which Klein relates to Old Irish crot “harp” and to Old Welsh crunn “round, curved”.^[2] Merriam-Webster connects it with Latin curvus “curved” and crown.^[4] The surnames Crowder and Crowther come from it.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

An ancient Celtic instrument of the viol class: before 1310 in the OED.^[8] Wycliffe's Bible has “a symphonye and a crowde”.^[7]

Semantic evolution

From 1622 it was used of a fiddle, a sense later kept in dialect,^[8][11] as in Lancashire and Dorset.^[12] It was applied to the player from 1607.^[8]

Timeline

• c. 1310 – the Celtic instrument.^[8]
• 1607 – a fiddler.^[8]
• 1622 – a fiddle.^[8]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. An ancient Celtic bowed or plucked stringed instrument, also called crwth.
2. (dialect) A violin.

Word family

• crowder

Related words

• curd
• press
• throng
• crown
• crwth

Usage notes

Merriam-Webster distinguishes crowd, a close gathering with a loss of individuality, from throng, crush, mob and horde.^[1]

References

1. ^ a b Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
2. ^ a b c d Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
3. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
4. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b c d Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Pearsall, Judy, ed. (1998), The New Oxford Dictionary of English, Oxford: Clarendon Press
11. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)