throng

noun

1. A group of people crowded or gathered closely together.

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

   “Perhaps you suppose this throng / Can't keep it up all day long?”

   “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.”

   “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.”

   “I imagine throngs of people – well-dressed, sipping spritzes – in front of a boat that, to me, is a coffin which held 700 people.”

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

   “Bloody corpses, broken bones reveal / A throng of clashes crushed, our nightmare sealed / Amongst the shadows and the stones”

verb

1. (transitive)To crowd into a place, especially to fill it.

   “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.”

   “Gay sex remains illegal but is rarely prosecuted, and an estimated 26,000 revelers thronged this year’s annual Pink Dot gay rights rally — one of the largest public gatherings of any sort seen in recent years.”

2. (intransitive)To congregate.

   “[…]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.

   “Much people followed him, and thronged him.”

   “A third is wroth: ‘Is this an hour ⁠For private sorrow’s barren song, ⁠When more and more the people throng The chairs and thrones of civil power?’”

   “Pulling my hat down over my eyes, so as to hide somewhat the emotions which had thronged my countenance, I took a long look at the man whom I so long had sought.”

adj

1. (Northern-England, Scotland)Filled with persons or objects; crowded.

   “Earth, sweet Earth, sweet landscape, with leavès throng / And louchèd 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— […]”

2. (Northern-England, Scotland)Busy; hurried.

   “Mr Shaw was very civil; he said he was rather throng just now, but if Ernest did not mind the sound of hammering he should be very glad of a talk with him.”

   “[P]eople were having holidays all round the world, though the Glasgow shops and offices and factories were as throng with business as ever.”