Meaning
Something - an act, a song, a dish, a policy - guaranteed to please an audience instantly and broadly. Farlex's examples run from a famous spinach dip at a party to a fun cover song at a gig: the reliable roar on demand. The word carries a whiff of the calculated, the safe choice aimed squarely at the cheap seats. Usually a noun for the act itself; the adjective crowd-pleasing covers the manner. The faint suspicion of calculation is often deliberate - contrast a critics' darling. Spacing varies between crowd-pleaser and crowdpleaser. Regional use: General English; the OED's first record is British.
Origin
Show-business vocabulary with a datable record: the OED's only evidence for crowd-pleaser is from 1943, in Gen: the services' fortnightly, a British forces magazine - wartime entertainment coverage minting the performer's label for the sure-fire number. Wiktionary records the closed form crowdpleaser as the main headword with crowd-pleaser as its alternative, and its citations include the Guardian's 2011 quest for the perfect nut roast ('a crowd-pleaser'). Farlex's idiom guide rounds out the modern spread, from party food to cover songs to clowns. The compound is transparent - a performer who pleases the crowd - and the hyphenless crowdpleaser is common in headlines.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- crowd-pleasers
- crowd-pleasing
Usage Examples
- Close the set with the singalong; it's the reliable crowd-pleaser.
- The trifle is the Christmas crowd-pleaser that disappears first.
- His speeches are all crowd-pleasers and no policy, said the rival.