consumer

From consume +‎ -er.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /kənˈsjuːmə/, /kənˈʃuːmə/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• (General American, Canada) IPA^(key): /kənˈsumɚ/
• (General Australian) IPA^(key): /kənˈsjʉːmə/
• Hyphenation: con‧su‧mer
• Rhymes: -uːmə(ɹ)

consumer (plural consumers)

1. One who, or that which, consumes.
   • 2006, Edwin Black, chapter 2, in Internal Combustion‎^[1]:

     But through the oligopoly, charcoal fuel proliferated throughout London's trades and industries. By the 1200s, brewers and bakers, tilemakers, glassblowers, pottery producers, and a range of other craftsmen all became hour-to-hour consumers of charcoal.

2. (economics) Someone who trades money for goods or services as an individual.

   Antonym: producer

   This new system favours the consumer over the producer.

3. (by extension) The consumer base of a product, service or business.

   Our consumers are upwardly mobile and middle-class.

4. (ecology) An organism (heterotroph) that uses other organisms for food in order to gain energy.

   Antonym: producer

   Hyponyms: carnivore, decomposer, detritivore, first-order consumer, herbivore, omnivore, scavenger, second-order consumer

• consumption

• consumer on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• “consumer”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• consumer in Keywords for Today: A 21st Century Vocabulary, edited by The Keywords Project, Colin MacCabe, Holly Yanacek, 2018.
• "consumer" in Raymond Williams, Keywords (revised), 1983, Fontana Press, page 78.
• “consumer”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.

• cornmuse, mucrones

Borrowed from Latin cōnsūmere (“to devour, waste, use up”).

• IPA^(key): /kɔ̃.sy.me/

• Audio:

  (file)

consumer

1. to consume; to use up
2. (figuratively) to consume

   Synonym: consommer

• consommer

• “consumer”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.