# consumer

Pronunciation: US say "kuhn-SOO-mur" /kənˈsumɚ/; UK say "kuhn-SYOO-muh" /kənˈsjuːmə/

## Noun

1. A person who buys goods or services for their own use rather than to resell them, or such buyers considered as a group.
   - Simple: Someone who buys things or services to use, not to sell. It can also mean all such buyers together.
   - _The average consumer spends noticeably more during holiday sales._
   - _Consumers responded quickly to the sudden price cuts._
2. Any person or thing that uses up, eats, or destroys something.
   - Simple: A person or thing that uses something up.
   - _This factory is the largest consumer of electricity in the region._
   - _Modern data centers are voracious consumers of energy._
3. An organism that feeds on other organisms to obtain energy, rather than producing its own food.
   - Simple: A living thing that eats other living things to get energy.
   - _In a food web, a fox acts as a consumer that preys on smaller animals._
   - _Primary consumers eat plants, while secondary consumers eat other animals._

## Origin

Formed from the verb consume plus the suffix -er.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/consumer (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).