huddle
pronunciation
How to pronounce huddle in British English:
UK [ˈhʌdl]
How to pronounce huddle in American English:
US [ˈhʌdl]
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- Noun:
- a quick private conference
- a disorganized and densely packed crowd
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- Verb:
- crowd or draw together
- crouch or curl up
Word Origin
- huddle
- huddle: [16] Huddle originally meant ‘hide’ (‘to chop off the head of the sentence, and slyly huddle the rest’, James Bell’s translation of Walter Haddon against Orosius 1581), suggesting that it could well be a derivative of the same base as produced English hide (its form indicates that it would have come via a Low German dialect). But virtually from the first huddling was more than just ‘hiding’ – it was ‘hiding in a heap or among a crowd’; and from this has developed the word’s modern meaning ‘crowd or draw together’.
- huddle (v.)
- 1570s, "to heap or crowd together," probably from Low German hudern "to cover, to shelter," from Middle Low German huden "to cover up," from Proto-Germanic *hud- (see hide (v.)). Compare also Middle English hoderen "heap together, huddle" (c. 1300). Related: Huddled; huddling. The noun is from 1580s. U.S. football sense is from 1928.
Example
- 1. Two soldiers huddle behind a wall .
- 2. Everyone was standing in a huddle in the corner .
- 3. Unlike them , he had no siege mentality , and needed no berlin wall to huddle behind .
- 4. Cameron obliges and then a huddle of women surrounds him as he makes his way to the bar .
- 5. Baby great egrets huddle together in a nest .