There’s something fishy about crowds

Whenever I’m in a busy place in St. Petersburg with a local, I tense up right before they make a predictable pronouncement

This place is overcrowded.

I want to say Don’t you mean “packed”? but don’t want to hear about how my American English was just “slang” or “informal” compared to the polyglot abilities of these Real Europeans.

So I looked it up.

First of all, let’s get our definitions straight:

If a place is crowded, it is full of people. (Don’t get me started on the non-word “crowdy”).

If a place is packed, it is completely full.

If a place is overcrowded, it contains too many people or things.

Now, if we look at frequency in American English, “crowded” is far and away the winner, with “packed” coming in second, and “overcrowded” coming in at a distant third.

Hey, you: get off of my crowd.

Out of curiosity, though, I wanted to see what words collocated with these different ideas.

None of these seem pleasant, besides the lunch.

I was initially shocked to see so many instances of “overcrowded” at all!

I dug a little deeper:

Yeesh. Someone call Ralph Nader.

Note how “packed” often collocates with positive words (“packed and enthusiastic” “packed and appreciative” “packed and cheering”) while none of the words paired with “overcrowded” are in any way desirable.

The critical distinction is this: “overcrowded” implies excess, an inappropriate level of something. The other two words indicate that something is at or close to capacity. This is the crucial difference.

If we speculate a little, we can see that “overcrowded and underfunded/overburdened/substandard/understaffed/dangerous” schools, hospitals, or cities are the fault of some authority. An “overcrowded” place exists because of some failure of planning or regulation. A “packed” venue is either small or very popular, i.e. not inherently bad qualities.

Even the expression to be “packed like sardines” just means that you’re so close to others that you cannot move. The sardines that make up this idiom, though, aren’t “overcrowded” in their can (they are dead — RIP sardines).

Sometimes you don’t need words at all.

It’s best to let the more useful and common “crowded” and “packed” push “overcrowded” to the margins, where it belongs.