audience
Pluralaudiences
- 1A group of people gathered to listen to or watch a performance, speech, or similar event.
The audience fell silent as the lights dimmed before the first act.
Stand-up comedians learn to read an audience and adjust their timing.
UsageSomeone sits in the audience. The verb is usually singular (the audience was), sometimes plural when the people act separately.
Similarcrowd, spectators, house
Note
The word now covers watchers as freely as listeners. H. C. Casserley, writing in Railway Magazine in 1952, found himself with "a small group of Scottish school lasses" as his audience to an awkward job: they came to look, not to listen.
- 2The people who watch, listen to, read, or follow something, such as a broadcast, a publication, or a person's work, considered as a whole.
The broadcast reached an audience of several million viewers.
Late-night programs compete for the same national audience.
UsageSize is large or small (a large audience), and you reach or attract an audience.
- 3A formal meeting granted by a monarch, high official, or religious leader.
The envoy was finally granted an audience with the queen.
The young composer was granted a brief audience with the emperor.
UsageYou are granted or ask for an audience, and have it with someone: an audience with the pope.
Note
A meeting that is granted rather than simply arranged. The word keeps the older idea of a hearing given to a speaker, because the visitor comes to be heard. It implies rank on one side, which is why BioWare's Mass Effect (2007) has its ruling Council "give us an audience."
Less common meanings
- 4The act or state of listening to or giving a hearing to a speaker.
WHen he had ended all his ſayingꝭ in the audience of the people / he entred ĩto Capernaum.
1526, [William Tyndale, transl.], The Newe Testamẽt (Tyndale Bible)Similarhearing
Note
Here audience is the listening itself rather than the listeners, the meaning nearest the Latin "hearing" behind the gathered crowd. It is archaic now, kept alive in set phrases such as give audience and crave audience. It also survives in the older idiom Tyndale uses in 1526, "in the audience of the people," meaning within their hearing. In plain modern prose, hearing does this job.
Checked 5 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- This sense denotes hearing or listening. en.wiktionary.org
- Audience ultimately derives from Latin audientia, meaning hearing or listening. en.wiktionary.org
- Tyndale's 1526 New Testament contains the exact phrase "in the audience of the people," referring to their hearing. biblehub.com
- 5A judicial court of the Spanish empire, or the territory it administered.
Practice
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Origin
From Middle English audience, borrowed through Middle French and Old French audience, from Latin audientia. This traces back to audiēns ("hearing"), the present participle of the verb audiō ("I hear").
Checked 5 Nov 2026 · 4 facts
- English audience comes from Middle English audience through Middle French and Old French audience, ultimately from Latin audientia. en.wiktionary.org
- Latin audientia derives from audiēns, the present participle of audiō. en.wiktionary.org
- Audiēns means hearing. en.wiktionary.org
- Audiō means I hear. en.wiktionary.org