peanut gallery
- noun
- /ˈpiːnʌt ˈɡæləri/
- Archaic
:
gallinero
- Sitting in the peanut gallery allowed the kids to enjoy the show without paying too much.
Examples
-
While the critics sat in the front row, the real fans watched from the peanut gallery above.
-
The audience in the peanut gallery cheered as the performer took the stage.
-
From my vantage point in the peanut gallery, my view is that this has absolutely nothing to do with marijuana, nothing to do with the Green Party, and only a nominal relation to people like "the Green Hornet" as a testament to the company they keep and ultimately support.
Blog text (22)
Synonyms
1
4.0
The highest seats in a theatre, far from the stage
The highest seats in a theater balcony that are far from the stage
An upper seating area at the back of a theatre with the least expensive seats
Antonyms
88
1.3
The first row of seats nearest the stage or screen that lets you see the action clearly
Surface Forms
Morphology
The literal constituents ('peanut' implying small/insignificant and 'gallery' meaning a group of spectators) give a partial clue that this refers to a minor or low-status audience, so a learner could guess something like 'insignificant audience'. However, the full idiomatic sense — a vocal, often disrespectful group of critics or hecklers — requires cultural/pragmatic knowledge beyond the literal words and is not fully predictable, so it is only partially transparent to a B1 learner.
Etymology
Peanut gallery comes from old theaters and shows where the highest seats were the cheapest. People in those seats often ate peanuts and shouted at the stage, so the phrase came to mean the 'cheap seats' high above the performance.