Employ

How to spell employ

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce employ

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does employ mean?

1. verbTo give someone paid work; to keep a person on staff.
2. verbTo make use of something, such as a method, tool, or skill.
3. nounThe state of being paid to work for a person or organisation.

Employ in a sentence

• verb

  The factory plans to employ another two hundred workers next year.

• verb

  The surgeon decided to employ a less invasive technique.

• noun

  She remained in the employ of the bank for thirty years.

• verb

  Small firms often cannot afford to employ a full-time accountant.

• verb

  Writers often employ short sentences to build tension.

• noun

  The gardener had been in his employ since the spring.

Where does employ come from?

Language of origin: French

Employ travelled into English from the Old French verb employer, which itself descended from the Latin implicare, meaning 'to fold in', 'to enfold', or 'to involve'. That Latin verb was built from in- 'in' and plicare 'to fold', the same plicare that gives us 'pliable', 'apply', and 'complicate'. The original idea of folding someone into a task gradually softened into the modern senses of putting a person to work and putting a thing to use. English adopted it during the fifteenth century, and interestingly the same Latin source also produced 'imply' and 'implicate' along a more literal 'folding in' route. The spelling trap is the silent ending: the word finishes on the -oy sound but the e at the start is unstressed, so writers sometimes reach for an i, and the link to 'imply' is a useful reminder of the shared root.

How the word is built

• em- (in)
• ploy (from plicare: to fold); literally 'to fold in', hence 'to involve, enlist'