client

plural clients

1. A customer, a buyer or receiver of goods or services.

   Synonyms: buyer, customer, patron, purchaser

2. computingThe role of a computer application or system that requests and/or consumes the services provided by another having the role of server.

   Antonyms: server

3. A person who receives help or services from a professional such as a lawyer or accountant.

   1 more example

   I corralled the judge, and we started off across the fields[…]. And thus we came by a circuitous route to Mohair,[…]. My client welcomed the judge […] and they disappeared together into the Ethiopian card-room, which was filled with the assegais and exclamation point shields Mr. Cooke had had made at the sawmill at Beaverton.

   1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter VIII, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC

4. lawA person who employs or retains an attorney to represent him or her in any legal matter, or one who merely divulges confidential matters to an attorney while pursuing professional assistance without subsequently retaining the attorney.
5. historicalIn ancient Rome, retainers and followers associated with a gens.

   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, “Introduction”, in The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Clarendon Press, →OCLC, page xv

6. abbreviationellipsisinternational relationsEllipsis of client state.

   A third preliminary comment deals explicitly with the relations between clients and superpowers.

   1989, Edward A. Kolodziej, Roger E. Kanet, Limits of Soviet Power, page 95

   1 more example

   Russia’s leader is a conservative, old-school thug. He thinks Russia is still a superpower, not what he’s made it: a despised rogue state and Chinese client.

   2026 June 14, Simon Tisdall, “Russia is losing the war in Ukraine, and Putin is desperate. But that’s when he’s at his most dangerous”, in The Guardian, →ISSN