Word of the Day:
claque
What It Means
A group of people hired to attend a performance and to either applaud or boo.
A group of fawning admirers.
A group of people who pre-arrange among themselves to express strong support for an idea, so as to give the false impression of a wider consensus.
Claque in Context
“The most obvious gay connection to opera is the cult of the diva. Stauncher even than the fans of Garland of Striesand, the claques of Maria Callas and Joan Sutherland (among others) have been fanatical in their devotion. Going beyond the usual "appreciation stage" the fans glorify and deify their...”
Did You Know?
Borrowed from French claque (“group of people hired to applaud or boo, claque”, literally “a slap; a clap”).
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: claque (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “claque.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/claque. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
