Pertaining to hearing, to the sense of hearing, or to the organs of hearing: Timothy wanted to read more about the range of auditory modality in humans in comparison to that of dogs and cats.

1. An assembly of hearers; an audience: Since the assemblage of listeners and spectators wanted to hear and watch the spontaneous concert, the auditory stood or sat on the grass of the park and enjoyed the music.
2. An auditorium: The members of the church were all gathered in the auditory, or in the nave of their church, and listened carefully to what the pastor had to say.

The ability to adjust to changes in sound: An auditory adaptation study showed some evidence of changes in the auditory threshold resulting from exposure to sound.

An epileptic aura characterized by illusions or hallucinations: An auditory aura is a peculiar sensation or phenomenon only perceived by the patient and which precedes an epileptic seizure with dizziness, visual disorder, and sometimes disturbances of sound.

The embryonic (before birth) cartilaginous membranes (tough and thin elastic tissues) which enclose the inner developing ears of babies.

A decreased response to a steady tone or noise: A person perceives a sound as diminishing in loudness during an auditory fatigue.

Abnormal acuteness of hearing due to the increased irritability of a sensory neural mechanism: During the recovery process from her accident, Monica seemed to experience auditory hyperesthesia and asked for a quiet room in the hospital.

The partial loss of hearing: The auditory hypoesthesia which Jack experienced was caused by the prolonged exposure to the sound of the jack hammer which he used for work.

A mechanical factor that determines the amount of sound energy that is absorbed or reflected at the eardrum: Auditory impedance is also related to the loss of transmission of sounds to the middle ear and the cochlea (part of the inner ear that converts mechanical energy, or vibrations, into nerve impulses sent to the brain).

The eighth cranial nerve, or vestibulocochlear nerve (relating to the vestibule and the cochlea of the ear): The auditory nerves connect the inner ear with the brain.

The auditory nerves innervate the ear and carry impulses relating to both sound stimuli and balance to the brain.

A hearing sensation that occurs when another sense is stimulated: When LuAnn felt vibrations in her fingertips, she also experienced auditory synesthesia, sensing the sound that the vibrations might have made.

A noise induced hearing loss resulting from a brief exposure to an intense sound which is not considered to be the same as noise-induced hearing loss of workers who are exposed to a continuous noise in their occupations: "An auditory trauma may have happened to someone at an early age or just before the onset of tinnitus."