[General] A murmur went through the crowd

[luxury20041985]

"A murmur went through the crowd when Michael Howard, the new Toryleader, was spotted in his first public ceremonial appearance."

From https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/nov/10/military.markoliver


Does this imply 1,2,or 3?

1. The crowd suddenly started murmuring.
2. Every person in the crowd started murmuring.
3. The crowd only murmured for a short time.

 

[jutfrank]

1. It means that some people in the crowd reacted when they saw Mr Howard. I don't know what you mean by 'suddenly'.
2. No, of course not.
3. What do you mean by a 'short' time? I imagine several seconds at least.

The noun murmur is used here to describe the sound of lots of people speaking all at once in relatively quiet voices. It's not really that each person murmured, it's that the crowd as a whole murmured. We can imagine that the effect of this is that there seemed to be a single sound that passed through the crowd.

 

[GoesStation]

A murmuring crowd is quieter than a rumbling one. You can hear an example of the latter at 3:53 here:

 

[luxury20041985]

A single sound passes through the crowd. People in the front of the crowd first started murmuring, then people in the middle and then people in the rear, like this? Is this spread quick?

What do you mean by a 'short' time? I imagine several seconds at least. Does "go through" necessarily imply that the whole crowd murmured briefly?

 

[luxury20041985]

Is this a novel? It sounds intriguing. "rumble, rumble, rumble".

 

[Tarheel]

Two things. It can be confusing when you quote people without really quoting them. Also, I would imagine that the murmuring happened all through the crowd all at once.

:-|

 

[luxury20041985]

Two things. It can be confusing when you quote people without really quoting them. Also, I would imagine that the murmuring happened all through the crowd all at once.

:-|

Thanks for your advice, Tarheel. Because when someone says "go through", it somehow suggests to me a sequence. (go through a tunnel). But actually the crowd murmured all at once.

 

[Tarheel]

Now you know there's more than one way to use that phrase.

 

[GoesStation]

GoesStation—the video finishes at 10:06.

Yes, sorry about that. The rumblings start after 3:53. I've corrected the post.

 

[GoesStation]

Is this a novel? It sounds intriguing. "rumble, rumble, rumble".

Are you asking about the video? It's a comedy album by the late, great Stan Freberg. It will be quite challenging for a learner (or even a non-American native speaker) to understand.

 

[Tdol]

Does this imply 1,2,or 3?

It implies that enough people murmured something to the people they had gone with to create a noticeable noise. It probably didn't last long, but you're looking at it the wrong way IMO.