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Glite Dictionary
tough customer

tough customer

3 5.3
A person who is hard to deal with or persuade when making a deal
  • noun
  • /tʌf ˈkʌstəmər/
  • Informal
translation icon : cliente difícil
  • When negotiating the contract, we realized we had a tough customer on our hands.
  • a pretty tough customer
  • one tough customer
  • very tough customers

Examples

  • Jo can be a pretty tough customer.

    Fourteen (2019)

  • Valerie Vincent can be a tough customer.

    Fiction book (1996)

  • "She looks like a tough customer to me.

    Fiction book (1990)

  • I'll take care of our tough customer, okay?

    Three Fugitives (1989)

  • Men in your line of work are liable to run into some pretty tough customers.

    Capone (1975)

  • I didn't expect her to be such a tough customer.

    Fiction book (1998)

  • Bobby and Lyndon, they were tough customers, but Nixon is different.

    The Post (2017)

  • All I'm sayin' is that Lucas is a very tough customer.

    Three Fugitives (1989)

  • She's a tough customer, ain't she?

    Fiction book (1992)

  • He's handled some tough customers very gracefully.

    Blog text (11)

Synonyms

hardcase
vstough customer
  • Informal
1 8.1

A person who is tough and difficult to deal with

is more focused on difficulty in business or negotiation contexts
hard nail
vstough customer
  • Informal
8.4

A person who is very tough and not easily influenced

is used for people who resist persuasion especially in business talks
disagreeable person
vstough customer
4.5

An unpleasant person who is hard to get along with

is about being hard to handle or persuade in business settings
prickly personality
vstough customer
  • Informal
7.5

A person who gets annoyed easily and is hard to get along with

is about refusing negotiation or being difficult to persuade professionally

Antonyms

compliant
31 5.1

Willing to follow rules or do what other people want

Surface Forms

tough customer singular
tough customers plural

Morphology

tough + customer

The meaning 'a person who is difficult to deal with' is directly and transparently derived from combining 'tough' (difficult, hard to manage) with 'customer' (a buyer). This simple adjective+noun composition is a common, compositional pattern found across languages, so a B1 learner who knows both words will readily infer the MWE meaning.

Etymology

The noun tough customer comes from shop talk: a customer who is tough refuses offers and is hard to please. That's why it now means 'a person who is difficult to deal with'.