Employer

How to spell employer

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce employer

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does employer mean?

1. nounA person, company, or organisation that pays others to work for them.

Employer in a sentence

• Her employer offered a generous pension scheme.

• A good employer invests in training for new staff.

Where does employer come from?

Language of origin: French

This word traces back to the Latin verb implicare, which literally meant 'to fold in' or 'to enfold', built from in- 'in' and plicare 'to fold'. In Old French this developed into employer, meaning to apply or make use of something, and the underlying idea of 'folding someone into' a task or service is still visible in the modern sense of giving people work. English borrowed the verb 'employ' in the 1400s, and the agent noun 'employer', meaning the person or organisation that gives work to others, became common from the 1500s and 1600s. The same plicare root quietly survives in a whole family of relatives such as 'imply', 'apply', 'complicate' and 'deploy'. The spelling trap is the ending: it takes -er rather than -or, unlike many similar agent nouns, so writers who expect 'employor' get caught.

How the word is built

• em- (in, from Latin in-)
• ploy (root from Latin plicare: to fold)
• -er (agent suffix: one who does)