HEARER

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does hearer mean? 

• HEARER (noun)
  The noun HEARER has 1 sense:

1. someone who listens attentively

  Familiarity information: HEARER used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• HEARER (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Someone who listens attentively

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

attender; auditor; hearer; listener

Hypernyms ("hearer" is a kind of...):

beholder; observer; perceiver; percipient (a person who becomes aware (of things or events) through the senses)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "hearer"):

eavesdropper (a secret listener to private conversations)

Holonyms ("hearer" is a member of...):

audience (a gathering of spectators or listeners at a (usually public) performance)

Derivation:

hear (listen and pay attention)

 Context examples 

This gallantry was not much to the taste of some of his hearers; but Mrs. Bennet, who quarreled with no compliments, answered most readily.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

I perceived that the words they spoke sometimes produced pleasure or pain, smiles or sadness, in the minds and countenances of the hearers.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

THAT belonged rather to the hearer, for Marianne listened with horror, and cried excessively.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

He spoke with fire and conviction, mincing no words in his attack upon the slaves and their morality and tactics and frankly alluding to his hearers as the slaves in question.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Happily for him, a love of the theatre is so general, an itch for acting so strong among young people, that he could hardly out-talk the interest of his hearers.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Therefore, since my acquaintance were pleased to think my poor endeavours might not be unacceptable to my country, I imposed on myself, as a maxim never to be swerved from, that I would strictly adhere to truth; neither indeed can I be ever under the least temptation to vary from it, while I retain in my mind the lectures and example of my noble master and the other illustrious Houyhnhnms of whom I had so long the honour to be an humble hearer.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

If I told anything, my tale would be such as must necessarily make a profound impression on the mind of my hearer: and that mind, yet from its sufferings too prone to gloom, needed not the deeper shade of the supernatural.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Reluctantly, and with much hesitation, did she then begin what might perhaps, at the end of half an hour, be termed, by the courtesy of her hearers, an explanation; but scarcely, within that time, could they at all discover the cause, or collect the particulars, of her sudden return.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

He certainly did add 'spirit' to the meetings, and 'a tone' to the paper, for his orations convulsed his hearers and his contributions were excellent, being patriotic, classical, comical, or dramatic, but never sentimental.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Having described, in general terms, their course from the main river up to the time that they actually reached the base of the cliffs, he enthralled his hearers by his account of the difficulties encountered by the expedition in their repeated attempts to mount them, and finally described how they succeeded in their desperate endeavors, which cost the lives of their two devoted half-breed servants. (This amazing reading of the affair was the result of Summerlee's endeavors to avoid raising any questionable matter at the meeting.)

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)