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crowd

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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
  • 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)