employ
Formsemploys, employing, employed
Formsemploys, employing, employed
- 1To keep someone on as a paid employee.
Several local firms employ skilled engineers for long-term projects.
The university has employed her as a research fellow since 2019.
Note
The verb entered late Middle English meaning "to apply to a specific purpose." It came through Anglo-Norman and Old French from Latin implicāre, "to fold in, entangle, engage," which also lies behind the "use" meaning. Here it describes an ongoing relationship rather than a single act: a company employs hundreds, a site employs 60 people. The moment of taking someone on belongs to the rarer "hire" meaning.
- 2To use someone or something for a particular job or task.
Detectives employ a range of techniques to gather evidence.
The chef employed an unusual method to cook the fish.
Note
The object can be a person as easily as a tool. In Shakespeare's Othello the hero is told "we must straight employ you" against the Ottomans, which means putting a general to a task, not hiring him. The verb also takes abstractions, such as thoughts in Addison and property in Blackstone, often in the passive: thoughts "employed on serious subjects." Use and utilize are its near equivalents.
- 3To keep someone busy; to occupy their attention.
These tasks employ every spare moment of his day.
Her thoughts were employed with plans for the journey.
Note
Attention is the thing put to work, so the object is a mind, a heart or one's thoughts. Wordsworth writes that "the pleasant season did my heart employ," and The Merchant of Venice advises a man to "employ your chiefest thoughts / To courtship." Occupy is the everyday equivalent. Unlike the "use" meaning, the stress falls on absorption, not on a task carried out.
- 4The condition of being an employee; the state of having paid work under someone.
For decades he remained in the employ of the same shipping firm.
Several gardeners were once in the employ of the great estate.
Note
The noun is a separate borrowing, from French emploi, "job, employment," which entered English in the late 17th century. Its natural home is a possessive phrase: "in the employ of British subjects," "six thousand teachers in its employ." Outside that phrase the ordinary word is employment. In the employ of keeps the focus on whom a person works for.
Less common meanings
- 5To give someone a new job; to take someone on as a hire.
New ventures often employ workers straight out of college.
The management, who were close personal friends, had just employed a new chef.
2004, Jay Rayner, The ApologistNote
Here the weight falls on a single moment rather than an ongoing state. A garage employed a new mechanic yesterday, and in Jay Rayner's The Apologist (2004) the management "had just employed a new chef." Words like new, just and yesterday signal this sense. It is rare, and readers may take it as the ongoing "keep on staff" meaning. When the start of the job is the point, hire is the clearer choice.
- 6A person's occupation or regular line of work.
Weaving had been the chief employ of the village for generations.
Still he wrote on. He was too much engrossed in his own charmed employ not to be insensible for a time to all external influences: he might suffer afterwards, but now his mind was his kingdom.
1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], “A London Life”Note
An archaic noun for a pursuit someone is absorbed in, and it takes a possessive and an adjective freely. In Letitia Elizabeth Landon's Ethel Churchill (1837), a writer is "too much engrossed in his own charmed employ" to notice the world outside. In present-day prose it reads as deliberate period color. Occupation or work carries the meaning plainly.
- 7The act of putting a person to work or making use of a thing.
The employ of hired laborers shortened the time the harvest took.
Notwithstanding the employ of general and local bleeding, blisters, &c., the patient died on the fourth day after entrance.
1833, R. J. Bertin, Treatise on the Diseases of the HeartNote
An obsolete abstract noun for the putting of something to use. Charles W. Chauncy's 1833 translation of R. J. Bertin's Treatise on the Diseases of the Heart reports a patient who died "notwithstanding the employ of general and local bleeding," meaning the use of bloodletting as treatment. A modern writer would say use or employment. Written today, the phrase would be read as being on someone's payroll.
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Practice
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Origins
From late Middle English emploien ("to apply to a specific purpose"), from Anglo-Norman emploier and Old French emploiier ("to entangle, to make use of"), ultimately from Latin implicāre ("to infold, entangle, engage"), from in- ("in") plus plicāre ("to fold"). It is a doublet of imply and implicate.
Borrowed from French emploi ("job, employment"), a noun formed from the verb employer ("to put to use, to employ"), first attested in the late 17th century.