Crowded

How to spell crowded

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce crowded

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does crowded mean?

1. adjectiveFilled with too many people or things packed closely together.

Crowded in a sentence

• The morning train was so crowded that nobody could find a seat.

• We left the crowded market and found a quieter cafe down the street.

Where does crowded come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The base word 'crowd' goes back to the Old English verb crudan, which meant 'to press', 'to push', or 'to drive forward'. That same pushing-and-shoving sense survives in the picture of a crowded room, where bodies are literally pressed together. By the late medieval period the verb had given rise to a noun for a throng of people pushing together, and the past-participle adjective 'crowded' followed naturally, meaning 'filled by a pressing mass'. The word is firmly Germanic in origin, with cousins in Dutch kruien, 'to push along'. Because the spelling simply attaches the regular -ed ending to 'crowd', the only real trap is keeping the 'ow' sound spelled with 'ow' rather than 'ou', and remembering the single 'd' before the suffix doubles into 'd' plus 'ed'.

How the word is built

• crowd (from Old English crudan: to press, to push)
• -ed (adjective/past-tense suffix)