horde

noun

ˈhȯrd 

1

a

: a political subdivision of central Asian nomads

b

: a people or tribe of nomadic life

2

: a large unorganized group of individuals : a teeming crowd or throng

hordes of peasants

Synonyms

• army
• bike [chiefly Scottish]
• cram
• crowd
• crush
• drove
• flock
• herd
• host
• legion
• mass
• mob
• multitude
• press
• rout
• scrum
• swarm
• throng

Choose the Right Synonym for horde

crowd, throng, horde, crush, mob mean an assembled multitude.

crowd implies a close gathering and pressing together.

a crowd gathered

throng and horde suggest movement and pushing.

a throng of reporters

a horde of shoppers

crush emphasizes the compactness of the group, the difficulty of individual movement, and the attendant discomfort.

a crush of fans

mob implies a disorderly crowd with the potential for violence.

an angry mob

Examples of horde in a Sentence

A horde of tourists entered the museum.

Hordes of reporters were shouting questions.

Recent Examples on the Web

On Friday, Trump’s horde fell by an extraordinary 39 electoral votes, lowering his total to 270 (the number needed to win), against 268 for Harris. —Shawn Tully, Fortune, 2 Nov. 2024

For scholars such as Michael Rogin, hordes of giant insects represented communism. —Salama Udaipurwala, JSTOR Daily, 30 Oct. 2024

On Sunday, native New Yorker Timothée Chalamet surprised a horde of curly-haired doppelgängers by crashing a Timothée Chalamet look alike contest held in Washington Square Park. —Shania Russell, EW.com, 27 Oct. 2024

This new medical paradigm impacted not only how external threats were imagined—the hordes of viruses, spores and prions who now appeared to be always threatening to break through our defences—but also how the internal world of the body was envisioned. —Elsa Richardson, TIME, 3 Oct. 2024

Word History

Etymology

Middle French, German, & Polish; Middle French & German, from Polish horda, from Ukrainian dialect gorda, alteration of Ukrainian orda, from Old Russian, from Turkic orda, ordu khan's residence

First Known Use

1555, in the meaning defined at sense 1a

Kids Definition

horde

noun

ˈhō(ə)rd 

ˈhȯ(ə)rd

1

: a wandering people or tribe

2

: a great multitude : throng, swarm

hordes of tourists