auditory

Etymology

The noun is inherited from Middle English auditorie,^[2][3] borrowed from Latin audītōrium (“lecture room, audience”),^{[4][3][2][5][6]} originally the neuter of an adjective, used as a noun.^[4][7] The adjective is borrowed from Late Latin audītōrius (“relating to hearing or hearers”),^[8][2][6][9] which the OED, Etymonline and Collins call simply Latin.^[4][7][10] It comes from audītor (“hearer”),^[4][7][5][6] from audītus, the past participle of audiō (“to hear”),^[7][2][8] from Proto-Indo-European *au- (“to perceive”).^[7][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

As a noun, an assembly of listeners, an audience: about 1380, in one of Wyclif's English works.^[4][6] The MED dates that text to about 1400 and has an earlier record in the Wycliffite Bible of about 1384, where the word is the hall that Agrippa and Bernice entered.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The OED notes that the sense "audience", the first in English, was the last to develop in Latin.^[4] In Middle English the noun meant both a gathering of hearers and a hall of assembly.^[3] From the 17th century it was also a lecture room or philosophical school, a sense obsolete by the late 18th.^[4][6] In the sense of a place for hearing it was later replaced by auditorium, recorded from 1727.^[7] Johnson (1755) still defined the noun as an audience, a collection of people gathered to hear.^[11] The adjective, "relating to hearing or its organs", appears in 1578 in Banister's Historie of Man;^[4][2] Johnson quoted Newton on the "auditory nerves".^[11] From 1740, in Colley Cibber, the adjective could also mean "belonging to the auditorium of a theatre", a sense the Shorter Oxford calls rare.^[4][6] Today the noun is archaic,^[2][6] and the adjective is the common word.^[10][2]

Timeline

• c. 1380 – noun, an assembly of hearers, an audience.^[4]
• c. 1384 – noun, a hall where people gather to hear, in the Wycliffite Bible.^[3] The OED's first record of this sense is from 1548.^[4]
• 1578 – adjective, relating to the sense or organs of hearing.^[4][2]
• 1606 – a lecture room or philosophical school (obsolete by 1778).^[4]
• 1623 – the office of an auditor of accounts (obsolete).^[4]
• 1740 – adjective, belonging to the auditorium of a theatre.^[4][6]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Relating to hearing, the sense of hearing or the organs of hearing: damage to the auditory nerve.^[10][2][4]
2. Perceived or experienced through hearing: auditory memories of her childhood.^[2]
3. Strongly responsive to sounds; audile.^[2]

Noun

1. (archaic) An audience.^[2][6][10]
2. (archaic) An auditorium, or a place for hearing.^[2][6][10]

Word family

• auditorily
• preauditory
• postauditory
• auditory nerve

Related words

• audio
• audio-
• auditorium
• audition
• auditor
• audience
• audible
• audit

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
3. ^ a b c d e Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
8. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
10. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
11. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.