horde

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noun

1. An enormous number of persons gathered together: crowd, crush, drove, flock, mass, mob, multitude, press, ruck¹, swarm, throng. See big/small/amount, group.
2. A very large number of things grouped together: army, cloud, crowd, drove, flock, host, legion, mass, mob, multitude, ruck¹, score (used in plural), swarm, throng. See big/small/amount, group.

from Polish
This word originated in Poland

In 1241, a fearsome army invaded Poland. They were the Mongols or Tatars, fresh from incorporating Russia into the largest empire the world has ever seen and efficiently moving westward to make it larger. Their main objective was Hungary, but to divide and mislead the European forces they sent a diversionary army of 20,000 north to Poland. There the efficient and disciplined Tatars defeated Polish and German armies and captured the cities of Sandomir and Krakow. A final victory for the Tatars, over the army of Duke Henry II of Silesia, came on April 9, 1241, near the city of Legnica. Duke Henry himself was killed, but the Tatars were finished with Poland, and their army turned south to Hungary to battle there. To this day, April 9 is celebrated in Poland not as a defeat but as a day when the Tatars were stopped.

In Hungary, the Mongols accomplished great military victories too. Just as they were about to push further west, however, they got word of the death of their Great Khan, Ogadei, the son of founder Genghis Khan. It was necessary for all the leaders to return to Mongolia to choose a successor. They left central Europe and, as it happened, never came back.

The Tatars had brought a terror to Europe that would be remembered for many hundreds of years. They also brought a name for an awesome military force that would be remembered in the languages of Europe: the horde.

This word had its beginning in the Turkic orda or ordu meaning "residence of the Khan." The Ukrainians, subjugated by Mongol armies, learned the word as orda. One dialect of Ukrainian added a g at the front of the word, and Polish changed the g to h. Polish, then, is the source of the word as we know it today. It was from this Polish version, via medieval French and German, that horde came into English, as long ago as 1555.

By then, the Tatars were history. The Mongol empire had divided into competing factions before the thirteenth century was over, and in 1502 its last stronghold in Russia ceased to exist. But hordes live on in our language. We speak of hordes of shoppers at a sale, hordes of autograph seekers surrounding a celebrity, or on a summer evening in the north woods, hordes of mosquitos.

Polish belongs to the Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family. It is closely related to Russian and Czech, among others. There are nearly forty million speakers of Polish in Poland and another two million in the United States.

Among the other Polish gifts to English are the foods baba (a cake, 1827), bigos (a stew), and kielbasa (sausage, 1939); rendzina, a kind of soil (1922); uhlan, a kind of cavalry modeled on the Tatars (1753); and a dance, the mazurka (1818). Two famous dances have English names that mean "Polish" but come from other languages: polka is Czech and polonaise is French.

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IN BRIEF: A large group, especially one on the move.

The horde of mounted soldiers covered the hillside above the fort.

Tutor's tip: The "horde" (large crowd) resisted to reveal the location of their "hoard" (well-protected stock of valuables).

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See words rhyming with "horde."

  See crossword solutions for the clue Horde.

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - horde, flok

Nederlands (Dutch)
horde, bende, Mongoolse nomadengroep, zwerm, in horden leven/ -rondtrekken

Français (French)
n. - horde, nuée, foule

Deutsch (German)
n. - Horde, Masse

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - ορδή, λεφούσι, στίφος

Italiano (Italian)
orda

Português (Portuguese)
n. - horda (f)

Русский (Russian)
орда, банда, стая, жить скопом, собираться группами

Español (Spanish)
n. - horda, muchedumbre

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - hord, nomadstam, svärm

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
群, 移动群, 游牧部落

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 群, 移動群, 遊牧部落

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 유목민의 무리, 큰 떼거리

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 遊牧民の群れ, 大群
v. - 群れをなす

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) قبيله من البدو الرحل, حشد, جماعه‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮המון, קהל, שבט נודד‬

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