English Language & Usage Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for linguists, etymologists, and serious English language enthusiasts. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Let's say I'm an independent software developer who gets paid, by the hour, to create tailored software for solving one person's particular problems; I'm a contractor and a service provider.
What's a good noun to use for the person who commissioned work from me? Employer came to mind, but that sounds very… "permanent," and client is a very loaded word in software development. Customer could work, but is there a more accurate noun that I could use?
That party is quite often referred to as the contractee
Project owner (also called client or principal) or other entity that enters into a contract with a contractor or vendor and receives specified goods and/or services under the terms of the contract (such as a purchase order).
The verbiage, "hereinafter referred to as the 'Contractee'” is often found in legal docments.
Here's an example document using that terminology.
