Employee

How to spell employee

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce employee

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does employee mean?

1. nounA person hired to work for wages or a salary by another person or organisation.

Employee in a sentence

• Every employee received a payslip at the end of the month.

• The company offered each employee a parking space near the office.

Where does employee come from?

Language of origin: French

This word traces back to the Latin implicare, which literally meant 'to fold in' or 'to entangle', built from in 'in' and plicare 'to fold'. By way of Old French employer, the sense softened into 'to involve someone in a task' and then simply 'to put to work'. English adopted the verb 'employ' in the late 1400s, and the noun 'employee' arrived much later, in the early 1800s, modelled on French employé, the past participle meaning 'one who is employed'. The tell-tale -ee ending marks the person on the receiving end of an action, the same pattern seen in 'trainee', 'payee' and 'addressee'. The spelling trap is the run of vowels: the doubled e of -ee following the o of employ, which tempts writers toward 'employe' or 'employ-ie'.

How the word is built

• em- (in/into)
• ploy (from Latin plicare: to fold, engage)
• -ee (one who receives the action)