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

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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

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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

"The challenge for estate agents is ensuring they don't get carried away with the possibilities at the expense of the customer experience," it said.

From BBC ● Nov. 7, 2026

People seeking a replacement are told to contact Baxters customer care team at [email protected].

From BBC ● Nov. 7, 2026

Pacific Power, part of Berkshire-owned PacifiCorp, faces a costly problem: It has a small rural customer base to share the expense of hardening the power grid in a sprawling, wildfire-prone area of Northern California.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 6, 2026

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

Mrs. Janssen’s husband disappeared last month, just before she became a customer, and I've never asked any more about that.

From "Girl in the Blue Coat" by Monica Hesse

"Carefully place the full can in a bag and dispose of it in an external bin," the FSA told customers.

From BBC ● Nov. 7, 2026

Pacific Power’s Northern California territory sweeps across 11,292 square miles from the coast to the Nevada border, serving about 46,000 customers.

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

It is asking regulators to let it recover $340.5 million of that sum from customers.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 6, 2026

Max flipped it back out to me as Sadie was finishing with the last of her customers and the people coming in for the midnight movies began to snag their seats.

From "Legendary Frybread Drive-In" by Cynthia Leitich Smith

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Related Words

• client
• consumer
• patron
• purchaser

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