Hearing; listening. Mrs. Browning.n. A hearer.n. In the early church: One not yet baptized, but receiving instruction preparatory to baptism; a catechumen of the first stage.n. In the Eastern Church, according to the systematic classification of penitents in force at the close of the third century, but becoming obsolete early in the fifth, one of the second class of public penitents, occupying a station higher than that of the weepers and lower than that of the prostrates.