Definition of "audience" []

• The spectators or listeners assembled at a performance, for example, or attracted by a radio or television program. (noun)
• The readership for printed matter, as for a book. (noun)
• A body of adherents; a following: The tenor expanded his audience by recording popular songs as well as opera. (noun)
• A formal hearing, as with a religious or state dignitary. (noun)
• An opportunity to be heard or to express one's views. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "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."
• "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."
• "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."