customer
Americannoun
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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
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.
This led to supermarkets putting limits on how many eggs each customer could buy and both producers and retailers put prices up to offset their losses.
From BBC • May 24, 2026
“If you can convert even 1% of Royal Pop customers into an AP customer in the long term, then you have done something interesting for the business,” says Müller.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 22, 2026
CBS News Radio’s biggest customer — the all-news stations owned by Audacy, including KNX — have already switched their network service to ABC News Audio.
From Los Angeles Times • May 22, 2026
The carmaker topped the Ford Energy announcement with news of its first customer, a French utility company.
From MarketWatch • May 22, 2026
Lippmann faced the usual objections any Wall Street bond customer voiced to any Wall Street bond salesmen—If it’s such a great trade, why are you offering it to me?—but other, less usual ones, too.
From "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis
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.
