captive audience
Listeners or onlookers who have no choice but to attend. For example, It's a required course and, knowing he has a captive audience, the professor rambles on endlessly. This expression, first recorded in 1902, uses captive in the sense of “unable to escape.”
Words Nearby captive audience
The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
How to use captive audience in a sentence
Asian slapstick humor does not translate well, and most of the captive audience agreed, although they grudgingly watched it.
Prisoners Get Cultural Fix with 8-Tracks and Bootleg Cassettes | Daniel Genis | August 18, 2014 | THE DAILY BEASTThere's a captive audience for TV shows starring people who horrify us with their behavior.
At its heart is a business model that keeps Jewish citizens a captive audience.
Israeli Attorney Suggests Common-Law Marriage As an Act of Civil Disobedience | Irit Rosenblum | November 8, 2013 | THE DAILY BEAST“This is kind of a captive audience,” explained Sgt. Sean Whitcomb.
The SOTU is the biggest captive audience Obama will have before the ax is due to fall March 1.
Budget Battles Ahead, Obama Prepares High-Stakes State of the Union | Eleanor Clift | February 11, 2013 | THE DAILY BEAST
Happiness lifted some of the gloom from his face as he realized that he had a captive audience who would listen to his troubles.
Deathworld | Harry HarrisonHe thought sourly to himself: "I'm a captive audience without even an interest in the production tricks."
Operation: Outer Space | William Fitzgerald JenkinsAs you can see, I dearly love a lecture—and a captive audience.
This Crowded Earth | Robert BlochIn exchange for his generosity he intended to get some information from his captive audience.
The Ethical Engineer | Henry Maxwell Dempsey
Browse