customer
noun
Simple meaning
A person who buys goods or services from a shop or business.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
kuhstuhmerSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈkʌstəmɚ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
A patron, a client; a person or company who purchases or receives a product or service from a business or merchant, or intends to do so.
informal
A person, especially one engaging in some sort of interaction with others.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A1 · Beginner
- Frequency
- Very Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A patron, a client; a person or company who purchases or receives a product or service from a business or merchant, or intends to do so.
Used this way, customer is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in business or professional contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Business/professional
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use customer
- “A happy customer is more likely to return and buy again.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
Accepted or habitual practice.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
By custom.
Make to specifications.
Make to specifications.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A foreign purchaser who buys goods outright for resale.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
An item made to the customer's specifications.
An item made to the customer's specifications.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
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What Does It Mean Here?
Words can change meaning depending on context.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.