customer
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 →
2) (informal) An ugly customer is a person who is dangerous or difficult to deal with. tree →
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 →
- 8 customers left. tree →
- Each customer bought 3 drinks. tree →
- How many customers did he serve in all? tree →
- The shop was full of customers before the holiday. tree →
- The baker said hello to every customer. tree →
- Customers wait in a queue to pay. tree →
- Mrs Brown is a regular customer at the café. tree →
- Cucullin was an ugly customer to meet with; and, the idea of the "cake" aforesaid flattened the very heart within him. tree →
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.
- It was reported that a tribunal made an airline honour what its website chatbot had wrongly promised a customer.
- At first he said he couldn't: who would take the washing home to his customers?
- A clay tablet from Ur, about 3,750 years old, is a customer's angry letter about bad copper.
- Shops cover the money they lose to stealing partly by raising prices, so honest customers pay too.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «customer» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.