mobbed

1. 1
   adjective

   Filled with a large, dense crowd of people; extremely busy and packed.

   Like a subway car at rush hour, packed wall to wall.

   The little restaurant was absolutely mobbed all through the lunch rush.

   Every train platform looked mobbed during the evening commute.

   Similarpacked, crowded, jammed, heaving, swamped

   Oppositeempty, deserted, quiet

   Note

   Here crowding becomes a condition: a place that is mobbed has had a mob pour into it, and the crowd need not be named. It usually follows its noun (the train's mobbed) and takes degree words: more mobbed, most mobbed. Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting (1993) shows how easily it sits in everyday talk, in a broad Scots complaint about a London train with no seats left.

2. 2
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of mob.

   Excited supporters mobbed the team bus outside the stadium.

   The store was mobbed by shoppers the moment the doors opened.

   Note

   One spelling does double duty for the past tense and the participle, with the b doubled as in robbed and sobbed. The participle readily forms the passive, as in a star mobbed by fans, and whether the crowd is hostile depends on context. A rarer verb meaning to wrap in a cowl shares the form. Once no crowd is named, the participle shades into the adjective "crowded".

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