customs

Pluralcustoms (some meanings)

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The government department or agency authorized to collect the taxes charged on imported goods.

   Customs held the container for inspection after the declared value looked suspicious.

   Importers must register with customs before any shipment can clear the port.

   Note

   The plural form names a single institution. It acts as one body, so customs stopped us, not one of several offices. Writers often capitalize it as Customs when they mean the national authority itself, as in Customs stopped us in the airport. Keep it distinct from the duties themselves. Customs collects customs, and only the capital letter or the verb tells you which one is meant.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The process of passing through customs inspection at a border checkpoint.

   After a long flight, they still had to clear customs before meeting their family.

   He breezed through customs with nothing to declare.

3. 3
   noun

   Plural of custom.

   Wedding customs in the region blend influences from several neighboring cultures.

   Travelers should respect the customs of the communities they visit.

   Note

   An ordinary plural that shares its spelling with the duties on goods. Here it counts habits, traditions, and long-established practices, as in wedding customs or the customs of a community. Usually the surrounding words settle which meaning is in play. Customs of the region means practices, while customs on wine means money. The collective sense of a business's patrons rarely needs this plural.

4. 4
   nouncountable or uncountableplural

   The duties or taxes a government imposes on goods being imported or exported.

   The merchant grumbled about the customs levied on every crate of imported wine.

   Lowering customs on raw materials encouraged domestic manufacturers to expand.

   Similarduties, tariffs, levies

   Note

   Here the old word for habit became a word for money. Customs is simply the plural of custom, perhaps pulled toward its fiscal meaning by customhouse, Middle English custome hous. The plural is fixed in this sense, even when a sum is attached: customs of £200 were due on the wine. A single duty is never a custom.

5. 5
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The spot at a border checkpoint where customs inspections of arriving goods take place.

   A sniffer dog worked the bags as passengers filed past customs.

   The officer waved her toward customs for a closer look at her purchases.

   Note

   A place you pass through rather than stand in. The natural verb is go through, as in Jeph Jacques's 2022 line: we go through customs, then they'll meet us outside baggage claim. In that phrase, the place and the inspection process merge into one. People seldom say at customs unless they mean the physical counter or hall.

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