noun- A sudden frenzied rush of panic-stricken animals.
- A sudden headlong rush or flight of a crowd of people.
- A mass impulsive action: a stampede of support for the candidate.
verb stam·ped·ed,
stam·ped·ing,
stam·pedes verb, transitive- To cause (a herd of animals) to flee in panic.
- To cause (a crowd of people) to act on mass impulse.
verb, intransitive- To flee in a headlong rush.
- To act on mass impulse.
Origin:
Origin: Spanish estampida, uproar, stampede
Origin: , from Provençal
Origin: , from estampir, to stamp
Origin: , of Germanic origin
.
Related Forms:
Word History: The Spanish word
estampida, meaning “explosion, bang, crash, uproar,” seems a vivid term to describe a sudden rush of animals, such as buffaloes or cattle, and was first so used in American Spanish. From this use came our word
stampede (actually from the Spanish
estampido, a masculine noun corresponding to the feminine
estampida, first recorded in 1828). Thus
stampede, now a general English word, is an Americanism, a word or expression that originated in the United States. The United States was later to see stampedes of miners rushing westward to find gold. Not surprisingly, an early instance of the application of this word to humans is found in the
San Francisco Herald in 1851.