Crowd - Terminology

Terminology

The term crowd is often defined in contrast to other group nouns for collections of humans or animals: aggregation, audience, group, mass, mob, populous, public, rabble and throng. For example in "Public Opinion" Vincent Price compares masses and crowds:

Crowds are defined by their shared emotional experiences, but masses are defined by their interpersonal isolation.

In human sociology, the term "mobbed" simply means "extremely crowded", as in a busy mall or shop. In animal behaviour mobbing is a technique where many individuals of one species "gang up" on a larger individual of another species to drive them away. Mobbing behaviour is often seen in birds.