client
Pluralclients
- 1Someone who buys or receives goods or services from a business.
The salon offers returning clients a discount on their next visit.
Every client who signs up this month gets free delivery.
UsageClient usually suits services (a lawyer's or a salon's clients); for shops, customer is more usual.
- 2The role of a computer application or system that requests or consumes services provided by another system acting as a server.
The desktop client syncs files with the company's cloud storage.
Web browsers act as clients, sending requests to servers around the world.
Oppositeserver
Note
A role rather than a kind of machine: whatever asks is the client, whatever answers is the server, and the two words work as a pair. Because the roles are functional, a single host can be a client in one exchange and a server in the next. In everyday use the word often names the program itself, as in a desktop client that syncs files.
Checked 7 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- Clients request services and servers provide them. en.wikipedia.org
- Client and server are functional roles, and the same host can perform both roles in different exchanges. rfc-editor.org
- 3Ellipsis of client state.
Rome turned the conquered kingdom into a client rather than a province.
The treaty reduced the once-proud kingdom to a client, its foreign policy dictated from abroad.
Note
A clipped way of saying client state: a country economically, politically or militarily dependent on a stronger one. The image recalls the Roman retainer, who depended on a patron. The short form works only where the context keeps the full phrase in view, as in writing on international politics that sets clients against the superpowers they lean on.
Checked 7 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- Client is an abbreviated form of client state. en.wiktionary.org
- A client state depends economically, politically or militarily on a more powerful state. en.wiktionary.org
- A Roman client depended on a patron for protection. en.wikisource.org
Less common meaning
- 4In ancient Rome, a retainer or follower associated with a particular gens, or clan.
As a client of the Claudii, he could count on the family's support in any lawsuit.
The nomen belonged to all members of a gens and to all those attached to it (women, clients, and freedmen included).
1945, E[lizabeth] G[idley] Withycombe, The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian NamesOppositepatron
Note
A Roman institution. Latin cliēns may be related to a verb meaning "to lean," which would suit a client who leaned on a patron (patronus) or gens. The bond ran both ways. Attendance and political support went upward, and legal protection came down. The institution was called clientela, and Elizabeth Gidley Withycombe notes in 1945 that clients even shared the gens's nomen.
Checked 7 Nov 2026 · 6 facts
- Roman clients depended on patrons and were associated with their patrons' gentes. en.wikipedia.org
- Patrons and clients had reciprocal obligations, including patrons' legal protection of clients. penelope.uchicago.edu
- Clients attended their patrons and supported them politically. en.wikipedia.org
- The institution was called clientela. en.wiktionary.org
- Elizabeth Gidley Withycombe stated that clients shared the gens's nomen. en.wiktionary.org
- The Withycombe work cited for this statement was first published in 1945. robertmenziesinstitute.org.au
Practice
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Origin
Latin "cliēns", possibly related to "clinare" ("to lean"), reached Middle English as "client" by way of Anglo-Norman "clyent" and Old French "client".