readership

Etymology

It is formed from English reader + -ship.^[2][3][4][5] Reader goes back to Old English rǣdere (“reader; counsellor”),^[3][6] an agent noun from rǣdan, the source of read.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The office or position of a reader: 1563, in a marginal note in Foxe's Actes and Monuments.^[2] Merriam-Webster also dates its first known use to 1563,^[7] while Etymonline and Dictionary.com have it from about 1719.^[3][4]

Semantic evolution

The word first named the post held by a reader, at first one who reads lessons or prayers in church, later also a university teacher.^[2] Johnson (1755) defined it as the office of reading prayers, quoting Swift on graduates who take orders and seek a readership.^[5] In British universities a readership is the position of a teacher ranking below a professor.^[7][8] From 1771 to 1851 it was used jokingly as a mock title for a reader, on the model of your lordship.^[2] The collective sense, the readers that a writer, newspaper or magazine attracts or the total number of them, began in the United States: the OED's first example is from 1901,^[2] Etymonline's from 1914.^[3] This is now the main sense.^[8][7]

Timeline

• 1563 – the office or position of a reader.^[2][7]
• 1755 – Johnson defines it as the office of reading prayers.^[5]
• 1771 – a mock title of respect for a reader (obsolete by 1851).^[2]
• 1901 – in American use, the readers of a publication or writer as a group.^[2] Etymonline dates this sense to 1914.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. The readers of a particular newspaper, magazine, author or kind of writing, taken together, or their number: The magazine's readership doubled after the redesign.^[8][7][2]
2. (chiefly British) The position of a university reader, a teacher ranking below a professor.^[8][7][2]
3. The office or post of a reader in general, as of one who reads lessons or prayers in church.^[7][2][5]
4. The state or practice of being a reader.^[7]

Related words

• reader
• read

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
5. ^ a b c d Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
6. ^ Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
7. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins