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audience

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A group of viewers or listeners of a work of art or entertainment, especially those present at a performance.
  • noun The readership for printed matter, as for a book.
  • noun A group of people who follow or admire an artist or performer.
  • noun A formal hearing, as with a religious or state dignitary.
  • noun An opportunity to be heard or to express one's views.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The act or state of hearing or attending to words or sounds; the act of listening.
  • noun Liberty or opportunity of being heard; liberty or opportunity of speaking with or before, as before an assembly or a court of law; specifically, admission of an ambassador, envoy, or other applicant to a formal interview with a sovereign or other high officer of government.
  • noun A hearing; an interview or conference.
  • noun An auditory; an assembly of hearers.
  • noun [Sp. audiencia, commonly used in English writing without translation.] In Spain and Spanish countries, a name given to certain courts, also collectively to certain law-officers appointed to institute a judicial inquiry.
  • noun In England, an abbreviation for audience-court (which see). =

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The act of hearing; attention to sounds.
  • noun Admittance to a hearing; a formal interview, esp. with a sovereign or the head of a government, for conference or the transaction of business.
  • noun An auditory; an assembly of hearers. Also applied by authors to their readers.
  • noun (Eng.) a court long since disused, belonging to the Archbishop of Canterbury; also, one belonging to the Archbishop of York.
  • noun publicly.
  • noun to listen; to admit to an interview.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun an opportunity to state your case and be heard
  • noun a gathering of spectators or listeners at a (usually public) performance
  • noun a conference (usually with someone important)
  • noun the part of the general public interested in a source of information or entertainment

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin audientia, from audiēns, audient-, present participle of audīre, to hear; see au- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French audience, from Latin audientia, from present participle audiens "hearing", from verb audio, "I hear".

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Examples

  • One of the advantages to having published, in fiction, only vignettes, is the difficulty in reasonably fearing I'll complete lose an audience if ever called upon to read...though I don't recall reading any fiction before an actually present audience* since reading Borges's "Los dos reyes y los dos laberintos" before my senior-year highschool Spanish class, they as startled as the teacher that they could follow it.

    ConDFW Bill Crider 2007

  • The utter _ir_relation, in both cases, of the audience to the scene, (_audience_ I say, as say we must, for the sum of the spectators in the second instance, as well as of the auditors in the first,) threw upon each a ridicule not to be effaced.

    Autobiographical Sketches Thomas De Quincey 1822

  • Stating your target audience is mainly important so that the publisher/agent can evaluate whether you have a realistic idea of who your main audience is.

    Superhero Nation: how to write superhero novels and comic books » How to Communicate with Agents and Editors 2009

  • (Although, of course, the SF and Fantasy genres are larger, wider, and full of more warring or just different camps than they used to be - so the ways that the tie-in audience is different from the "standard" audience isn't as strong as it was ten or twenty years ago.)

    MIND MELD: How Do Media Tie-In Novels Affect SF/F? 2008

  • While immigrants from other regions play some role in audience development, the bulk of the local audience is upwardly mobile and formally educated, but with an education that is not necessarily invested in a particular European canon, for whom Haydn and Bartok are equally new, and whose concert-going loyalties may well include as much pop music as classical.

    E pur si muove Matthew Guerrieri 2008

  • Yes because the main audience is you children of the 80 Ninja Bike Jazz ftw

    EXTRALIFE – By Scott Johnson - Transformers Animated Cast Announced 2007

  • Remember that their main audience is the kool-aid crowd that still believes the Iraq War is about 9/11.

    Think Progress » Powerline’s Indictment Analysis: Up = Down 2005

  • As De Soto puts it, his main audience is heads of state.

    Post-President For Life 2003

  • As De Soto puts it, his main audience is heads of state.

    Post-President For Life 2003

  • So when I use the word audience throughout this book, it may refer to a group of any size or it may refer to a single individual.

    Life Is a Series of Presentations Tony Jeary with Kim Dower 2004

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