Overcrowded

How to spell overcrowded

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce overcrowded

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does overcrowded mean?

1. adjectiveFilled with too many people or things for the available space to be comfortable or safe.

Overcrowded in a sentence

• The morning train was so overcrowded that commuters could barely move.

• Inspectors closed the overcrowded flat after finding twelve tenants living in two rooms.

Where does overcrowded come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent English compound built from native Germanic parts. The prefix over- comes from Old English ofer, meaning 'above' or 'beyond', and here it carries the sense of 'too much' or 'in excess'. The core word crowd derives from the Old English verb crudan, meaning 'to press' or 'to push', the same idea of bodies being pushed tightly together. By the time crowd settled into its modern noun and verb senses around the 1500s, English freely attached over- to verbs to mean doing something to excess, giving 'overcrowd'. The past-participle adjective overcrowded then described any space packed with more people or things than it can comfortably hold, and it became common in the 1800s as cities, trains, and housing grew dense. The spelling stays regular throughout, so the only real trap is doubling the final d before -ed.

How the word is built

• over- (too much, excess)
• crowd (a dense mass of people)
• -ed (adjective/past-participle suffix)