peanut gallery love

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The hindmost or uppermost section of seating in a theater balcony, where the seats are cheapest.
  • noun A group of people whose opinions are considered unimportant.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • The cheapest seats in a theater, being typically those farthest from the stage, as in the uppermost balcony.
  • In a television show for children, the section where visiting children sit as guests during the performance.
  • colloq. Any group of children, or the chidren in a group of people.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun idiomatic Any source of heckling, unwelcome commentary or criticism, especially from a know-it-all or of an inexpert nature.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun (figurative) people whose criticisms are regarded as irrelevant or insignificant (resembling uneducated people who throw peanuts on the stage to express displeasure with a performance)
  • noun rearmost or uppermost area in the balcony containing the least expensive seats

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

The historically prior sense of “an upper balcony for black patrons” probably derives from an early association between peanuts and the African slaves who first introduced them to America; the extended sense of “a source of heckling” most probably derives from the disesteem in which those balconies and their occupants were generally held.

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Examples

  • Jeffrey Barg, who writes a language column for the Philadelphia Inquirer, noted recently that the first documented use of "peanut gallery" appeared in the New Orleans Times-Picayune in 1867.

    Everyday words and phrases that have racist connotations Scottie Andrew,Harmeet Kaur 2020

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