casual crowd

Definition of Casual Crowd

(noun) A group of people who happen to be at the same location at the same time.

Examples of Casual Crowd

• Patrons at a restaurant.
  
• People looking at lemurs at the zoo.

Casual Crowd Pronunciation

Pronunciation Usage Guide

Syllabification: ca·su·al crowd

Audio Pronunciation

International Phonetic Alphabet

• American English – /ˈkæʒəwəl kraʊd/
• British English – /ˈkæʒjʊəl kraʊd/

Usage Notes

• Plural: casual crowds
  
• Casual crowd is a type of crowd that sociology studies as a form of collective behavior. Other types of crowd include acting crowd, conventional crowd, and expressive crowd.

Additional Information

• Word origin of “casual” and “crowd” – Online Etymology Dictionary: etymonline.com
• Borch, Christian. 2012. The Politics of Crowds: An Alternative History of Sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Drury, John, and Clifford John T. Stott, eds. 2013. Crowds in the 21st century: Perspectives from Contemporary Social Science. London: Routledge.
• Easley, David, and Jon Kleinberg. 2010. Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning About a Highly Connected World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Hughes, Helen MacGill. 1972. Crowd and Mass Behavior. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
• Sandine, Al. 2009. The Taming of the American Crowd: From Stamp Riots to Shopping Sprees. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Related Terms

• acting crowd
• assembling perspective
• behavior
• collective behavior
• conventional crowd
• crowd
• demography
• expressive crowd
• population

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Works Consulted

Bruce, Steve, and Steven Yearley. 2006. The SAGE Dictionary of Sociology. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

Griffiths, Heather, Nathan Keirns, Eric Strayer, Susan Cody-Rydzewski, Gail Scaramuzzo, Tommy Sadler, Sally Vyain, Jeff Bry, Faye Jones. 2016. Introduction to Sociology 2e. Houston, TX: OpenStax.

Hughes, Michael, and Carolyn J. Kroehler. 2011. Sociology: The Core. 10th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Kendall, Diana. 2011. Sociology in Our Times. 8th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Random House Webster’s College Dictionary. 1997. New York: Random House.

Ravelli, Bruce, and Michelle Webber. 2016. Exploring Sociology: A Canadian Perspective. 3rd ed. Toronto: Pearson.

Scott, John, and Gordon Marshall. 2005. A Dictionary of Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press.

Stolley, Kathy S. 2005. The Basics of Sociology. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Thompson, William E., and Joseph V. Hickey. 2012. Society in Focus: An Introduction to Sociology. 7th ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Tischler, Henry L. 2011. Introduction to Sociology. 10th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Wikipedia contributors. (N.d.) Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation. (https://en.wikipedia.org/).

Cite the Definition of Casual Crowd

ASA – American Sociological Association (5th edition)

Bell, Kenton, ed. 2013. “casual crowd.” In Open Education Sociology Dictionary. Retrieved January 16, 2025 (https://sociologydictionary.org/casual-crowd/).

APA – American Psychological Association (6th edition)

casual crowd. (2013). In K. Bell (Ed.), Open education sociology dictionary. Retrieved from https://sociologydictionary.org/casual-crowd/

Chicago/Turabian: Author-Date – Chicago Manual of Style (16th edition)

Bell, Kenton, ed. 2013. “casual crowd.” In Open Education Sociology Dictionary. Accessed January 16, 2025. https://sociologydictionary.org/casual-crowd/.

MLA – Modern Language Association (7th edition)

“casual crowd.” Open Education Sociology Dictionary. Ed. Kenton Bell. 2013. Web. 16 Jan. 2025. <https://sociologydictionary.org/casual-crowd/>.