listener

noun

lis·​ten·​er ˈli-sᵊn-ər 

ˈlis-nər

plural listeners

: one who listens to someone or something

a radio program with many listeners

a friend who's a good listener [=who listens attentively and sympathetically]

Fanny, being always a very courteous listener, and often the only listener at hand, came in for the complaints and distresses of most of them.

—Jane Austen

The average concertgoer drifts in and out of the music, often losing the thread. The listener can't always hear the music in the music, and tends to notice only the most obvious (usually the loudest) events.

—David Schiff

Examples of listener in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

With the first bass drop of JG, listeners will immediately sense this album is different. — Jazz Monroe, Pitchfork, 16 Oct. 2026

The event is free and open to listeners of the podcast, whose fans are known as 92 Percenters. — Pete Grathoff, Kansas City Star, 15 Oct. 2026

The idea, to hear Chatten tell it, was to shake their listeners awake with a catastrophic warning. — Conçetta Ciarlo, Vogue, 14 Oct. 2026

The result gives longtime listeners recognizable pieces of Swift’s musical world while recombining them into a sonic identity that feels distinctly its own. — David Penn, Billboard, 14 Oct. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1572, in the meaning defined above