customer

American  

[kuhs-tuh-mer] / ˈkʌs tə mər /

noun

• customers
  plural

1. a person who purchases goods or services from another; buyer; patron.

2. Informal. a person one has to deal with.

   a tough customer; a cool customer.

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customer British  

/ ˈkʌstəmə /

noun

1. a person who buys

2. informal a person with whom one has dealings

   a cool customer

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customer Idioms  

1. see ugly customer.

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• customers
  plural

Etymology

Origin of customer

First recorded in 1400–50; late Middle English; custom + -er ¹; compare Middle English customer “collector of customs,” from Anglo-French; Old French costumier, cognate with Medieval Latin custumārius; see customary

Explanation

A customer is anyone paying for a good or service. Without customers, businesses would go out of business. When you're paying for just about anything, you're a customer. People shopping at the grocery store, sitting in coffee shops, going to movies, and buying DVDs online are all customers. The point of advertising is to drum up new customers for a business. There's a cliché that "The customer is always right," which is obviously not true, but shows how businesses try to make customers happy. They'd better. Without customers, any business is in deep trouble.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

customer customers

But Shein also saw 21.6-percent revenue increase in the rest of the world, which was "primarily driven by the growth in order volume and expansion of our customer base, particularly in Latin America".

From Barron's ● Sep. 28, 2026

That speaks pretty well about the customer experience and brand loyalty.

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 28, 2026

Cisco is blocking out time for workers to role play pitching to a customer, among other exercises.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 26, 2026

But it identified no military fuel shortage, no defense customer waiting for the oil, and no mechanism ensuring that the oil would ever reach the military.

From Slate ● Sep. 25, 2026

Slow Poke, a sponger, was our first customer.

From Full of Beans by Jennifer L. Holm

Many companies and other organizations, including some hospitals and physician groups, require customers or patients to take their complaints to private arbitration rather than to court.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 28, 2026

Probably the most impressive datapoint in the entire, 300-plus page IPO prospectus is that 40% of new Oura customers come from word-of-mouth recommendations from existing customers.

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 28, 2026

Instead of paying full price, many customers will “switch to another brand within their price-range,” analysts at Bernstein wrote in July, saying it could delay a return to revenue growth in China.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 28, 2026

Aldi's UK boss has accused rival supermarket chains of duping customers in some cases with loyalty discounts that start with "unrealistically high prices" and then drop.

From BBC ● Sep. 28, 2026

I washed the empty glass jars Mama’s customers brought back, and Jay dried them.

From "Root Magic" by Eden Royce

Related Words

• client
• consumer
• patron
• purchaser