readership

nounB2+Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #12,723 of 15,258mostly written

The readership is all the people who read a publication. A wide readership, declining readership, know your readership.

It is larger than circulation, because one copy is read by several people, and publishers count both. In British universities a readership is something else entirely: the post of Reader, a rank just below professor.

Definitions of readership

1nounreadershipAll the people who read a publication.B2+
“The magazine's readership is mostly young women interested in fashion.”

readership is an audience.

Where it comes from

Proto-West Germanic
*rādāri
Old English
rēdere
Middle English
reder
English
reader
English, today
readership

Built from

rǣdere · Old English — a reader; scholar; diviner

From reader + -ship. reader comes from Middle English reder, redar, redere, redare, from Old English rēdere, rǣdere (“a reader; scholar; diviner”), from Proto-West Germanic rādāri, equivalent to read + -er. Cognate with stq Räider (“advisor”), Dutch rader (“advisor”), German Rater (“advisor”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in News & Communication

Practise this word

readership in the wild

Regarded as having a left-leaning editorial tone, it carried a readership of almost 2 million and a circulation of 124,000 in 2006.
The Sowetan
Published in Johannesburg and distributed nationally, its core readership is in Gauteng.
The Citizen (South African newspaper)
In 2017, it had a readership of over 1.8 million which made it the fifth most widely read English language newspaper in the country.
Mumbai Mirror
The paper had the largest readership among tabloid format newspapers in the city before its downsizing.
Mumbai Mirror
Early on it was one of the largest newspapers in Iceland and at one point had a 64% readership in Iceland.
DV (newspaper)

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the rēdere family

reader

readership — used about once every 15,236 pages · #12,723 · point at the bar for the others

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