customer
Americannoun
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customers
plural
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a person who purchases goods or services from another; buyer; patron.
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Informal. a person one has to deal with.
a tough customer; a cool customer.
noun
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a person who buys
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informal a person with whom one has dealings
a cool customer
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
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.
Vocabulary lists containing customer
Business, List 1
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The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane
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Unit 17, Lesson 2
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
“If your customer is paying for it, they should know what they’re paying for,” said Daniel Yukelson, executive director of the Apartment Assn. of Greater Los Angeles.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 26, 2026
Nvidia also recently signed deals with two young cloud-computing companies in Australia where it acts as a customer of last resort if they can’t find others to rent their computing power to.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 25, 2026
Nearly two-weeks after a damaging storm struck the town of Gary in Indiana, leaving it without power, residents and officials are calling for accountability, infrastructure improvements, and customer relief measures.
From BBC ● Aug. 25, 2026
On a recent call with a customer, he asked a Cursor agent to build a slide presentation based on all Slack messages related to that customer over two months.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 25, 2026
It was the same customer who’d come in moments before.
From "Witchlings" by Claribel A. Ortega
“This approach ensures Raley’s remains strong and well-positioned to serve customers and communities for generations to come,” Carbahal said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 26, 2026
Cost-conscious customers giving up on TurboTax sent Intuit shares sliding in early Wednesday trade.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 26, 2026
"Our customers told us that comfort matters, which was why we'd been working on plans to improve seating on Thameslink services," he said.
From BBC ● Aug. 26, 2026
His departure comes amid a broader exodus at the firm, which is working toward an IPO that is expected in 2027 and racing to catch up to rival Anthropic in sales to business customers.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 25, 2026
I soon knew that I wanted to do more than wait on customers and keep the accounts.
From "The Hiding Place" by Corrie ten Boom
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
