Audience

How to spell audience

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce audience

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does audience mean?

1. nounThe group of people who watch, listen to, or read a performance, speech, or work.
2. nounA formal interview or meeting granted by a person of high rank or authority.

Audience in a sentence

• The comedian had the entire audience laughing within minutes.

• The ambassador was granted a private audience with the king.

• The report was written for a general audience rather than for specialists.

• The delegation requested an audience with the prime minister to present their case.

Where does audience come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin audientia, meaning 'a hearing' or 'the act of listening', which was built on the verb audire, 'to hear'. In Latin the noun referred quite literally to attention given by listening, and from there it came to mean a group of people gathered to listen. English borrowed it through Old French in the 1300s, at first describing a formal hearing granted by a person of rank, such as a king or a bishop, who would 'give audience' to a petitioner. Only later did it broaden to mean the assembled crowd at a performance or a lecture, the modern everyday sense. The same audire root survives in a cluster of familiar relatives, including 'audio', 'audible', 'audit' and 'auditorium', and that shared 'audi' opening is a useful anchor for the spelling, which then runs into the easily slurred '-ience' ending.

How the word is built

• audi- (from Latin audire, to hear)
• -ence (noun suffix forming the abstract sense)