Crowd, n.
Etymology: [AS. croda. See Crowd, v. t. ]
1. A number of things collected or closely pressed together; also, a number of things adjacent to each other. A crowd of islands. Pope.
2. A number of persons congregated or collected into a close body without order; a throng. The crowd of Vanity Fair. Macualay. Crowds that stream from yawning doors.--Tennyson.
3. The lower orders of people; the populace; the vulgar; the rabble; the mob. To fool the crowd with glorious lies. Tennyson. He went not with the crowd to see a shrine. Dryden.
Syn. -- Throng; multitude. See Throng.
4 other Webster entries under this spelling
Crowd (kroud), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Crowded; p. pr. & vb. n. Crowding.]
1. To push, to press, to shove. Chaucer.
2. To press or drive together; to mass together. "Crowd us and crush us." Shak.
3. To fill by pressing or thronging together; hence, to encumber by excess of numbers or quantity. The balconies and verandas were crowded with spectators, anxious to behold their future sovereign. Prescott.
4. To press by solicitation; to urge; to dun; hence, to treat discourteously or unreasonably. [Colloq.] To crowd out, to press out; specifically, to prevent the publication of; as, the press of other matter crowded out the article. -- To crowd sail (Naut.), to carry an extraordinary amount of sail, with a view to accelerate the speed of a vessel; to carry a press of sail.
Crowd, v. i.
1. To press together or collect in numbers; to swarm; to throng. The whole company crowded about the fire. Addison. Images came crowding on his mind faster than he could put them into words. Macaulay.
2. To urge or press forward; to force one's self; as, a man crowds into a room.
Crowd, n.
An ancient instrument of music with six strings; a kind of violin, being the oldest known stringed instrument played with a bow. [Written also croud, crowth, cruth, and crwth.] A lackey that . . . can warble upon a crowd a little. B. Jonson.
Crowd, v. t.
To play on a crowd; to fiddle. [Obs.] "Fiddlers, crowd on." Massinger.
Shades of meaning
Fernald has no entry of its own for crowd; he lists it under company, mob, throng.
Where he writes about it:
Company, from the Latin cum, with, and panis, bread, denotes primarily the association of those who eat at a common table, or the persons so associated, table-companions, messmates, friends, and hence is widely extended to include any association of those united permanently or temporarily, for business, pleasure, festivity, travel, etc., or by sorrow, misfortune, or wrong; company may denote an indefinite number (ordinarily more than two), but less than a multitude; in the military sense a company is a limited and definite number of men; company implies more unity of feeling and purpose than crowd, and is a less formal and more familiar word than assemblage or assembly. — from company
Collection, crowd, gathering, group, and multitude have the unorganized and promiscuous character of the assemblage; the other terms come under the general idea of assembly. — from company
A crowd may be drawn by mere curiosity; some strong, pervading excitement is needed to make it a mob. — from mob
A crowd is a company of persons filling to excess the space they occupy and pressing inconveniently upon one another; the total number in a crowd may be great or small. — from throng
Throng is a word of vastness and dignity, always implying that the persons are numerous as well as pressed or pressing closely together; there may be a dense crowd in a small room, but there can not be a throng. — from throng
Host and multitude both imply vast numbers, but a multitude may be diffused over a great space so as to be nowhere a crowd; host is a military term, and properly denotes an assembly too orderly for crowding. — from throng
Concourse signifies a spontaneous gathering of many persons moved by a common impulse, and has a suggestion of stateliness not found in the word crowd, while suggesting less massing and pressure than is indicated by the word throng. — from throng