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:
The deal, its newly minted CEO said at the time, would allow the chain to renew “our focus on our core pharmacy and retail platform, our stores and our customer experience.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 6, 2026
Alyssa Buetikofer, McDonald’s U.S. chief marketing and customer experience officer, is leaving the company.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 6, 2026
The company expects its net interest margin to be broadly stable in the fourth quarter and into 2027, due to higher competition and customer behavior in a higher rate environment.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 5, 2026
And Iren specifically enjoys a diversified customer base as well as a “well calibrated” financial management, the analysts said.
From MarketWatch ● Nov. 5, 2026
The clerk was helping another customer when I entered.
From "Hattie Big Sky" by Kirby Larson
The foreign automaker surge promises new choices for American customers and a wave of manufacturing jobs.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 7, 2026
Even after my father retired, he was warmly greeted by former customers for the remainder of his life.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 6, 2026
Tesla won’t be fully abandoning its Cybertuck customers, according to Wes Morrill, the lead engineer on the vehicle.
From MarketWatch ● Nov. 6, 2026
My father was very outgoing and wherever we went in town, he would meet and chat with Black’s regular customers.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 6, 2026
The Maggie Fox who had once turned away customers now ran ads in the back pages of Spiritual newspapers offering her services to anyone who paid a dollar.
From "American Spirits" by Barb Rosenstock
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
