Clientele

How to spell clientele

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce clientele

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does clientele mean?

1. nounThe customers or clients of a business or professional, considered collectively.

Clientele in a sentence

• The boutique built a loyal clientele over twenty years.

• The new menu was designed to attract a younger clientele.

Where does clientele come from?

Language of origin: French

The word arrived in English in the early nineteenth century directly from the French clientèle, which named a body of customers or followers taken together. The French term itself descended from the Latin clientela, meaning 'the relationship between a patron and his dependants' or simply 'a group of dependants', and that in turn was built on cliens, the everyday Latin word for a client, follower, or person who relied on a more powerful protector. In ancient Rome a cliens was literally someone under a patron's wing, and the same root gives us the modern word 'client'. The collective ending, written -ele in English from the French -èle, is what turns the single client into the whole assembled group of customers. That borrowed French shape is exactly the spelling trap: the word ends in a single -ele, not -elle or -ele with a doubled consonant, and the silent stress on the final syllable hides how it is built.

How the word is built

• client (from Latin cliens: a dependant or follower)
• -ele (collective noun suffix, via French -èle)