AUDIENCE • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Audience

Translators

Dictionaries

Courses

Other

Home

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/ˈɑdiəns/ /ˈɔdiəns/ Listen

noun

Audience n.

The act of hearing; attention to sounds. "Thou, therefore, give due audience, and attend."

Admittance to a hearing; a formal interview, esp. with a sovereign or the head of a government, for conference or the transaction of business. "According to the fair play of the world, Let me have audience: I am sent to speak."

An auditory; an assembly of hearers. Also applied by authors to their readers. "Fit audience find, though few." "He drew his audience upward to the sky."

Court of audience, or Audience court (Eng.), a court long since disused, belonging to the Archbishop of Canterbury; also, one belonging to the Archbishop of York.

In general audience (or open audience), publicly.

To give audience, to listen; to admit to an interview.

See images of 'Audience'

Etymology of 'Audience'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Audience" Quotes from Famous Books

... Sir Jemant Wamal, who in rather a foolish speech tells the audience that they are about to hear a piece composed by Tom the poet. Then appears Captain Riches, who makes a long speech about his influence in the world and the general contempt in which Poverty is held; he is, however, presently checked by the Fool, who ...

— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... disadvantages. A lecture, by keeping a critical audience constantly before our eyes, forces us to condense our subject, to discriminate between what is important and what is not, and often to deny ourselves the pleasure of displaying what may have cost us the greatest labor, but is of little consequence to other scholars. In lecturing we are constantly ...

— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller

... first of a course of lectures on German Literature, at Willis's Rooms, on Tuesday, to a very crowded and yet a select audience of both sexes. Mr. Carlyle may be deficient in the mere mechanism of oratory; but this minor defect is far more than counterbalanced by his perfect mastery of his subject, the originality of his manner, the perspicuity of his language, his simple but genuine eloquence, ...

— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle

... light of a buffoon? But why should I mention those places of hurry and worldly pursuit? What attention do we engage even in the pulpit? Here, if a sermon be prolonged a little beyond the usual hour, doth it not set half the audience asleep? as I question not I have by this time both my children. Well, then, like a good-natured surgeon, who prepares his patient for a painful operation by endeavouring as much as he can to deaden his sensation, I will ...

— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding

... Beguiling.]—See Preface. In the original story he made them drunk with wine. (Aesch. Eumenides, 728.) As the allusion would doubtless be clear to the Greek audience, I have added a mention of wine which is not in the Greek. Libations to the Elder Gods, such as the Fates and Eumenides, had to be "wineless." Historically this probably means that the worship dates from a time before wine was ...

— Alcestis • Euripides

More quotes...