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# customer

«customer» in Mova's school dictionary: **a person who buys things in a shop or uses a service…** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

### part of speech

noun (customer, customers)

### meaning for a pupil

1) A customer is a person who buys things in a shop or uses a service, like a café or a hairdresser. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/customer/#m1)

2) (informal) An ugly customer is a person who is dangerous or difficult to deal with. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/customer/#m2)

### sense in the lessons

people who come to a shop or restaurant; they buy, order and leave; «each customer bought N» gives a rate; phrases: «a regular customer», «customer service», «serve a customer», «the customer is always right»

### examples

- A waiter had 12 customers. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/customer/#x1)
- 8 customers left. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/customer/#x2)
- Each customer bought 3 drinks. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/customer/#x3)
- How many customers did he serve in all? [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/customer/#x4)
- The shop was full of customers before the holiday. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/customer/#x5)
- The baker said hello to every customer. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/customer/#x6)
- Customers wait in a queue to pay. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/customer/#x7)
- Mrs Brown is a regular customer at the café. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/customer/#x8)
- Cucullin was an ugly customer to meet with; and, the idea of the "cake" aforesaid flattened the very heart within him. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/customer/#x9)

### note

Countable: a customer, customers. A thing counted. «left» takes away, «came in» adds; «each customer bought N» gives a rate. Trap: the number of customers is not the number of things they bought.

### In the corpora

- [A company is responsible for what its chatbot tells customers.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/ai/20-news-court-cases-airline/11/)
- [It was reported that a tribunal made an airline honour what its website chatbot had wrongly promised a customer.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/ai/32-olympiad-claims-clues-and-tricky-messages/16/)
- [At first he said he couldn't: who would take the washing home to his customers?](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/62-willows-ch10-part2-a-shilling-a-leg/29/)
- [A clay tablet from Ur, about 3,750 years old, is a customer's angry letter about bad copper.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/63-writing-laws-and-money-how-strangers-learned-to-trust-each-other/11/)
- [Shops cover the money they lose to stealing partly by raising prices, so honest customers pay too.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/money/15-taking-without-paying-the-consequences/9/)

### Trees and pragmatics

[Every meaning and example of «customer» parsed by Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/customer/), each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.