swarm

1. 1.

   be teeming, be abuzz

   “The garden was swarming with bees”

   “The plaza is teeming with undercover policemen”

   “her mind pullulated with worries”

   Synonymsteempullulate

   Broaderhum

   Narrowercrawl
2. 2.

   move in large numbers

   “people were pouring out of the theater”

   “beggars pullulated in the plaza”

   Synonymspourstreamteempullulate

   Broadercrowd

   Narrowerspill over

Other forms of swarm

plural

swarms·

past tense

swarmed·

present participle

swarming·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about swarm

What does swarm mean?

swarm means "a moving crowd". That is the primary sense; the word has 4 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in swarm?

swarm has 1 syllable: swarm. In IPA it is /ˈswɔɹm/.

What is another word for swarm?

Close synonyms include drove, horde, cloud, teem, pullulate. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is swarm a common word?

swarm is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.