Other forms: hordes
A horde is a great crowd, often an unwelcome one. Hordes of tourists, a horde of children, hordes descended.
It is nearly always disapproving and nearly always plural — hordes of. Historically it named a nomadic Mongol or Turkic army, and the Golden Horde was the Mongol khanate that ruled Russia for two centuries. Note the spelling trap with hoard, which means a store and is a completely different word — a hoard of coins, hordes of people.
1nounhordeA great crowd, often an unwelcome one.
“Hordes of tourists fill the old town every summer.”
horde is a large crowd.
The word came through German and Polish from Russian orda, from a Turkic word meaning a camp or royal tent. The Golden Horde was named from the same word.
Proto-Turkic
*ordu — place of staying of the army, ruler etc.
Russian
орда́ — horde, clan, troop
Polish
horda
German
Horde
Middle French
horde
English, today
horde
Recorded in English since 1555. From Middle French horde, from German Horde, from Polish horda, from Russian орда́ (“horde, clan, troop”), probably from Kipchak Turkic (compare tt урда (“horde”)), ultimately from Proto-Turkic ordu (“place of staying of the army, ruler etc.”). Cognates include Turkish ordu (“camp, army”), mn орд (“court, castle, royal compound, camp, horde”) and xal орда. a doublet of orda and Urdu.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire