consumer

consume +‎ -er

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /kənˈsjuːmə/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /kənˈsumɚ/
• Rhymes: -uːmə(r)

consumer (plural consumers)

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

     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.

   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.

• (economics) and (biology): producer

biology

• carnivore
• decomposer
• detritivore
• first-order consumer
• herbivore
• omnivore
• producer
• scavenger
• second-order consumer

• "consumer" in Raymond Williams, Keywords (revised), 1983, Fontana Press, page 78.

• cornmuse, mucrones

• IPA^(key): /kɔ̃.sy.me/

• Audio

  (file)

consumer

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

• “consumer” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).