Other forms: clients
A client is the person or company paying a professional to do a job: a lawyer's client, an architect's client, an agency's client. They sit on the other side of the desk, and they are the reason there is any work at all.
Client goes with services and advice; customer goes with shops. A bakery has customers, a solicitor has clients, and mixing the two sounds odd to an English ear. Social workers and charities call the people they help clients as well, which keeps the relationship deliberately formal. Computing borrowed the word for machines: your email client is the program on your side of the line, talking to a server somewhere else, and that is what client-server means. A firm's whole set of clients is its clientele, or in plainer words its client base.
1nounclientA person or company that pays a professional or a firm for work or advice.~57%
“The client wants the drawings by Friday.”
2nounreceivesA person who receives help from a social worker, a charity or a public service.~2%
“Each client is seen by the same case worker every week.”
3nouncomputerA computer or program that connects to a server to get information.~41%
“Set the mail client up with these two settings and it will work.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 16 sentences found in the wild and placed 12 of them on a sense (4 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
client is a buyer of services.
Client walked in from Latin by way of France: Latin cliēns, then Old French and Anglo-Norman clyent, then Middle English client. Latin cliēns is akin to clinare, to lean. Leaning is a fair picture of the arrangement — the client leans on somebody else's training, because they do not have it themselves.
Proto-Indo-European
*ḱlew-
Latin
cliēns
Old French
client
Anglo-Norman
clyent
Middle English
client
English, today
client
Built from
From Middle English client, from Anglo-Norman clyent, Old French client, from Latin cliēns, akin to clinare (“to lean”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA