overcrowded

adjective

over·​crowd·​ed ˌō-vər-ˈkrau̇-dəd 

: crowded or filled to excess : having too many people or things

overcrowded streets/cities/classrooms

living in overcrowded conditions

… having an overcrowded space can make it hard for buyers to … visualize their own belongings in the space, said Los Angeles-based designer Francesca Grace.

—Jennifer Tzeses

… some 5 million workers commute for up to three hours on trains so overcrowded that there seem to be as many passengers hanging on to the outside of the carriages as there are inside.

—Ismail Merchant

Examples of overcrowded in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Each year the monsoon causes chaos across Mumbai, particularly for commuters travelling on its hectic, overcrowded public transport system. —Rhea Mogul, CNN Money, 27 May 2025

After California’s prisons became so overcrowded during the 1990s, a U.S. Supreme Court decision ordering the state to reduce its inmate count led to a series of legislative reforms, including the resentencing law that allowed the brothers to have their case reconsidered in court. —Tim Arango, New York Times, 15 May 2025

The vote for the student zoning was delayed after many parents and community members objected to a plan that would move around 100 elementary students at Marie G. Davis School in southwest Charlotte to the already overcrowded Dilworth Elementary for the 2025-26 school year. —Rebecca Noel, Charlotte Observer, 14 May 2025

Mechanized production and factory systems generated unprecedented wealth and productivity, but led to the displacement of many agrarian jobs and people to move into overcrowded, unsanitary urban centers in search of work. —Andrew R. Chow, Time, 12 May 2025

Word History

Etymology

from past participle of overcrowd

First Known Use

1725, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for overcrowded

• clouded
• crowded
• shrouded
• enshrouded
• unclouded
• uncrowded