Word of the day: claque

[Lochloosa]

This was my word of the day. Guess who I thought of....

Word of the Day for Thursday May 5, 2005

claque \KLACK\, noun:
1. A group hired to applaud at a performance.
2. A group of fawning admirers.

He cultivated the "Georgetown set" of leading journalists
and columnists and had them cheering for him as if he had
hired a claque.
--Theodore Draper, "Little Heinz And Big Henry," <1>New
York Times, September 6, 1992

Behind the hacks was the claque. They cheered and whooped
in a vague way, like a group of restrained English persons
at a Texas rodeo: "Whee! Whoooo! Polite cough!"
--Simon Hoggart, "Yee hah, chaps! It's the manifesto,"
<2>The Guardian, May 11, 2001

Charles Bukowski suffers from too good a press-- a small
but loudly enthusiastic claque.
--Kenneth Rexroth, "There's Poetry in a Ragged
Hitch-Hiker," <3>New York Times, July 5, 1964
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Claque comes from French, from claquer, "to clap," ultimately
of imitative origin.