Emily Dickinson Lexicon

CROWD, v.t.

1. To press; to urge; to drive together.
2. To fill by pressing numbers together without order; as, to crowd a room with people; to crowd the memory with ideas.
3. To fill to excess. Volumes of reports crowd a lawyer's library.
4. To encumber by multitudes. – Shak.
5. To urge; to press by solicitation; to dun.
6. In seamanship, to crowd sail, is to carry an extraordinary force of sail, with a view to accelerate the course of a ship, as in chasing or escaping from an enemy; to carry a press of sail.