What's the difference between
and
Enter two words to compare and contrast their definitions, origins, and synonyms to better understand how those words are related.

Masses vs Herd - What's the difference?

masses | herd |

As nouns the difference between masses and herd

is that masses is while herd is stove, cooker.

masses

English

Noun

(head)
  • (plural only, generically) People, especially a large number of people
  • * '>citation
  • Since first tossing its cartoonish, good-time cock-rock to the masses in the early ’00s, The Darkness has always fallen back on this defense: The band is a joke, but hey, it’s a good joke. With Hot Cakes—the group’s third album, and first since reforming last year—the laughter has died. In its place is the sad wheeze of the last surviving party balloon slowly, listlessly deflating.
  • (plural only) The total population.
  • The masses will be voting this Tuesday.
  • * 1975 , (Monty Python), '(Monty Python and the Holy Grail)'':
  • Dennis: Listen, strange women lyin' in ponds distributin' swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses , not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
  • (plural only) The lower classes or all but the elite.
  • Synonyms

    * (lower classes) unwashed

    Derived terms

    * unwashed masses

    Verb

    (head)
  • (mass)
  • See also

    * unwashed masses ----

    herd

    English

    Etymology 1

    From (etyl) herde, heerde, heorde, from (etyl) hierd, .

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A number of domestic animals assembled together under the watch or ownership of a keeper.
  • * 1768, ,
  • The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea.
  • Any collection of animals gathered or travelling in a company.
  • * 2007, J. Michael Fay, Ivory Wars: Last Stand in Zakouma , National Geographic (March 2007), 47,
  • Zakouma is the last place on Earth where you can see more than a thousand elephants on the move in a single, compact herd .
  • A crowd, a mass of people; now usually pejorative: a rabble.
  • * Dryden
  • But far more numerous was the herd of such / Who think too little and who talk too much.
  • * Coleridge
  • You can never interest the common herd in the abstract question.

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To unite or associate in a herd; to feed or run together, or in company.
  • Sheep herd on many hills.
  • To associate; to ally one's self with, or place one's self among, a group or company.
  • (rfdate) I’ll herd among his friends, and seem One of the number. Addison.

    Etymology 2

    (etyl) hirde, (hierde), from (etyl) . Cognate with German Hirte, Swedish herde, Danish hyrde.

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • Someone who keeps a group of domestic animals; a herdsman.
  • * 2000 , Alasdair Grey, The Book of Prefaces , Bloomsbury 2002, p. 38:
  • Any talent which gives a good new thing to others is a miracle, but commentators have thought it extra miraculous that England's first known poet was an illiterate herd .
    Derived terms
    * bearherd * cowherd * goatherd * gooseherd * hogherd * horseherd * neatherd * oxherd * swanherd * swineherd * vaxherd

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • (Scotland) To act as a herdsman or a shepherd.
  • To form or put into a herd.
  • I heard the herd of cattle being herded home from a long way away.

    See also

    * * drove * gather * muster * round up * ride herd on English collective nouns ----