Customs

How to spell customs

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce customs

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does customs mean?

1. nounThe official authority, or the area at a port or airport, that inspects goods and collects duties on items entering a country.
2. nounEstablished practices or traditions habitually followed by a group of people.

Customs in a sentence

• The inspector at customs examined every bag in the queue.

• Local wedding customs vary widely from one region to the next.

• Travellers must declare expensive electronics when passing through customs.

• The festival preserves customs that date back several centuries.

Where does customs come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin consuetudo, meaning 'habit', 'usage', or 'established practice', which itself grew from consuescere, 'to become accustomed', built on suescere, 'to be used to something'. It travelled into English through Old French costume during the 1200s, originally describing a customary practice or an established way of behaving in a community. Because rulers often had a customary right to levy charges on goods entering a town or port, the plural 'customs' came to mean the duties or tolls paid on imports, and by extension the government body and the checkpoint that collect them. So the modern border sense and the 'traditions' sense are the same word: both rest on the idea of what is habitually done. The spelling keeps the plain -oms ending of custom plus a simple plural -s, which is why the trap is mainly remembering it carries no apostrophe.

How the word is built

• custom (from Old French costume, from Latin consuetudo: habit, usage)
• -s (plural)