Definition of "applause"

applause

/əˈplɔːz/

noun
usually uncountable, plural applauses
1. The act of applauding; approbation and praise publicly expressed by the clapping of hands, stamping or tapping of the feet, acclamation, huzzas, or other means; marked commendation.
  Quotations
  A few days before, the adulations and applauses of a nation were sounding in her [Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma's] ears, and now she was come to this!
  1880, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter XLVI, in A Tramp Abroad; […], Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Company; London: Chatto & Windus, page 535
  Lestrade and I sat silent for a moment, and then, with a spontaneous impulse, we both broke at clapping, as at the well-wrought crisis of a play. […] It was at such moments that for an instant he [Sherlock Holmes] ceased to be a reasoning machine, and betrayed his human love for admiration and applause.
  1904 April 30, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of the Six Napoleons”, in The Return of Sherlock Holmes, New York, N.Y.: McClure, Phillips & Co., published February 1905, page 232
  Livy never gets her share of those applauses, but it is because the people do not know. Yet she is entitled to the lion's share.
  1916, Albert Bigelow Paine, chapter 57, in The Boys’ Life of Mark Twain