AUDIENCE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Audience

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/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.

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Etymology of 'Audience'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Audience" Quotes from Famous Books

... companion, who was a musical fanatico, gave his undivided attention to the stage; and, in the meantime, I amused myself by observing the audience, which consisted, in chief part, of the very elite of the city. Having satisfied myself upon this point, I was about turning my eyes to the prima donna, when they were arrested and riveted by a figure in one of the private boxes ...

— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... "Tower of the Psychics." In fittings, furniture, and equipment, it was much the same as the square room in the central tower at Fairy Fern Cottage. From the beginning, this room had been devoted to but one purpose; that of an audience chamber for the intercommunion of the Two Worlds, the spirit and the mortal. Every visiting mortal felt the presence of a refined spiritual atmosphere, a highly charged, electrostatic potential, which made possible superior spiritual conditions. In this room, Fennimore Fenwick was at ...

— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... difficulty whatever about this, and therefore Field stepped into the house as the curtain was going up on the last of the brilliant trifles of the evening. The house was packed to its utmost capacity with an audience that seemed decidedly to appreciate the bill of fare that had been prepared for ...

— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White

... evident that this scheme for an oration is, as a rule, much too artificial and elaborate for use at the present day. Modern intelligence and modern intensity of life demand greater brevity and directness. An audience of the present time rarely has patience with a discourse of more than an hour, and it generally prefers one of half that length. In a modern discourse we may generally recognize ...

— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter

... convict-hut, failed not to diffuse general complacency on the countenances of sixty persons, of various descriptions, who were assembled to applaud the representation. Some of the actors acquitted themselves with great spirit, and received the praises of the audience: a prologue and an epilogue, written by one of the performers, were also spoken on the occasion; which, although not worth inserting here, contained some tolerable allusions to the situation of the parties, and the novelty of a stage-representation ...

— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench

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