Crossword clues for claque
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Claque \Claque\, n. [F.]
A collection of persons employed to applaud at a theatrical exhibition.
a group of sycophantic followers. [PJC] ||
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1860, from French claque "band of claqueurs," agent noun from claquer "to clap" (16c.), echoic (compare clap (v.)). Modern sense of "band of political followers" is transferred from that of "organized applause at theater." Claqueur "audience memeber who gives pre-arranged responses in a theater performance" is in English from 1837.\n\nThis method of aiding the success of public performances is very ancient; but it first became a permanent system, openly organized and controlled by the claquers themselves, in Paris at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
[Century Dictionary]
Wiktionary
n. 1 A group of people hired to attend a performance and to either applaud or boo. 2 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. 3 A group of fawning admirers.
WordNet
n. a group of followers hired to applaud at a performance
Wikipedia
A claque is an organized body of professional applauders in French theatres and opera houses. Members of a claque are called claqueurs.
Usage examples of "claque".
But it was Nero who embellished the place, for here he had raced horse and chariot for the first time, to the plaudits of an adoring claque.
While his claque was applauding, the three judges huddled in strategy.
He showed up suddenly at the shipyard one afternoon, with his claque of followers.
Kethol and Durine had set their weapons down under the care of a claque of the castle girls who were busy chatting among themselves while pretending to ignore their young male counterparts.
The score or so cops in the audience, who are sitting together in a nervous claque, are absolutely cracking-up.
The occupants of the Room, hitherto strewn without more purpose than the human Jetsam of any large Seaport, all sit up at once, draw together, and with the precision of a long-rehears'd Claque, begin to chatter of Miss Davies, and Gluck, and ineluctably, Mesmer.
When it ended, the Augustiani, Nero's hired claque, rose as one man in wild jubilation and cheering.
The breathtaking anti-Semitism of America's enemy, and of the enemy's claque in Europe, didn't even give the traitor lobby pause.
Gentle's claque of doo-wopping Motown cabinet-puppets have purple dresses and matching lipstick and nail polish, and bouffants so blindingly Afrosheened that there had been special lighting and film-speed problems in the custodial closet: SEC.
Daniel lost track of the number of claques and cabals they burst in on, greeted, and left behind.
Judges accept bribes, hired claques make more noise than the audience, playwrights trim their poetry to the latest rabble-rousing breeze.
Judges accept bribes, hired claques make more noise than the audience, playwrights trim their poetry to the latest rabble-rousing breeze.
These huddled in the corners of the bug-ward like claques of pointy-headed ghosts.
Shaftoe and the other Marines have always known Station Alpha as a mysterious claque of pencil-necked swabbies who hung out on the roof of a building in the International Settlement in a shack of knot-pocked cargo pallet planks with antennas sticking out of it every which way.
Tojo and his claque of imperial army boneheads said to him, in effect: Why don't you go out and secure the Pacific Ocean for us, because we'll need a convenient shipping lane, say, oh, about ten thousand miles wide, in order to carry out our little plan to conquer South America, Alaska, and all of North America west of the Rockies.