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• n  someone who listens attentively

• The term itself can be merely descriptive or mildly offensive, depending on the user and the hearer; at any rate, it has become part of the American idiom.
• Last week an engineer in one room merely talked to a reporter in the adjoining room, but between speaker and hearer the message made 40 trips between Manhattan and Philadelphia .
• Make too blatant a request, as in Tootsie, and the hearer is offended; too subtle, as in Seinfeld, and it can go over the hearer's head.

• listener
• auditor
• attender

News & Articles

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• Use words to build up others
  Did you know there is a term for saying that you are not going to say something, and in saying you are not going to say it, you say it? When you say something negative about a person to another, you damage, maybe even kill, the character of the person you are speaking about in the mind of the listener. Apparently, the term “bless his heart” is supposed to fool the hearer into thinking that you ...
  Oct. 9, 2013 - San Antonio Express-News

Quotes

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• Antonin Scalia in FOXNews
  The First Amendment interest is greater when what the government is trying to stifle is not just a speaker who wants to say something but also a hearer who wants to hear what the speaker has to say,Scalia said.
• George Orwell in Wall Street Journal
  That is,Orwell wrote, "the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different."
• Frederick Douglass in Boston Globe (registration)
  Patrick would go on to read from the section of the speech where Douglass said, "To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker. It is just as criminal to rob a man of his right to...