throng

From Middle English throng, thrang, from Old English þrang, ġeþrang (“crowd, press, tumult”), from Proto-Germanic *þrangwą, *þrangwō (“throng”), from *þrangwaz (“pressing, narrow”), from Proto-Indo-European *trenkʷ- (“to beat; pound; hew; press”). Cognate with Dutch drang, German Drang. Compare also German Gedränge (“throng”).

• (UK) enPR: thrŏng, IPA^(key): /θɹɒŋ/
• (US) enPR: thrông, thrŏng, IPA^(key): /θɹɔŋ/, /θɹɑŋ/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɒŋ

throng (plural throngs)

1. A group of people crowded or gathered closely together; a multitude.
   • (Can we date this quote?) John Milton

     Not to know me argues yourselves unknown, / The lowest of your throng.

   • 1905, Baroness Emmuska Orczy, chapter 2, in The Affair at the Novelty Theatre‎:

     Miss Phyllis Morgan, as the hapless heroine dressed in the shabbiest of clothes, appears in the midst of a gay and giddy throng; she apostrophises all and sundry there, including the villain, and has a magnificent scene which always brings down the house, and nightly adds to her histrionic laurels.

   • 1939, Ammianus Marcellinus, John Carew Rolfe, Ammianus Marcellinus, Volume 1, Harvard University Press, page 463:

     Here, mingled with the Persians, who were rushing to the higher ground with the same effort as ourselves, we remained motionless until sunrise of the next day, so crowded together that the bodies of the slain, held upright by the throng, could nowhere find room to fall, and that in front of me a soldier with his head cut in two, and split into equal halves by a powerful sword stroke, was so pressed on all sides that he stood erect like a stump.

2. A group of things; a host or swarm.

• 1885, Gilbert & Sullivan, The Mikado

  Perhaps you suppose this throng

  Can't keep it up all day long?

throng (third-person singular simple present throngs, present participle thronging, simple past and past participle thronged)

1. (transitive) To crowd into a place, especially to fill it.
   • 1935, George Goodchild, chapter 5, in Death on the Centre Court:

     By one o'clock the place was choc-a-bloc. […] The restaurant was packed, and the promenade between the two main courts and the subsidiary courts was thronged with healthy-looking youngish people, drawn to the Mecca of tennis from all parts of the country.

2. (intransitive) To congregate.
   • c. 1608, William Shakespeare, Coriolanus, Act II scene i:

     […] I have seen the dumb men throng to see him and / The blind to bear him speak: […]

3. (transitive) To crowd or press, as persons; to oppress or annoy with a crowd of living beings.
   • Bible, Mark v. 24

     Much people followed him, and thronged him.

• thring

throng (comparative more throng, superlative most throng)

1. (Scotland, Northern England, dialectal) Filled with persons or objects; crowded.
   • 1882, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Ribblesdale:

     EARTH, sweet Earth, sweet landscape, with leavés throng

     And louchéd low grass, heaven that dost appeal / To, with no tongue to plead, no heart to feel; / That canst but only be, but dost that long—