[klahy-uh
nt] 
| 1. | a person or group that uses the professional advice or services of a lawyer, accountant, advertising agency, architect, etc. |
| 2. | a person who is receiving the benefits, services, etc., of a social welfare agency, a government bureau, etc. |
| 3. | a customer. |
| 4. | anyone under the patronage of another; a dependent. |
| 5. | Computers. a workstation on a network that gains access to central data files, programs, and peripheral devices through a server. |
| 6. | client state. |
| 7. | (in ancient Rome) a plebeian who lived under the patronage of a patrician. |
| 8. | being a regular customer: a client company. |
| 9. | economically, and often militarily, dependent upon a more prosperous, more powerful nation. |
[klahy-en-tl, klahy-uhn-tl] , adjective | cli·ent (klī'ənt) n.
[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin cliēns, client-, dependent, follower; see klei- in Indo-European roots.] cli'ent·age (-ən-tĭj) n., cli·en'tal (klī-ěn'tl, klī'ən-) adj. |
client programming
A computer system or process that requests a service of another computer system or process (a "server") using some kind of protocol and accepts the server's responses. A client is part of a client-server software architecture.
For example, a workstation requesting the contents of a file from a file server is a client of the file server.
(1997-10-27)
