Hire

How to spell hire

4 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce hire

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does hire mean?

1. verbTo give someone paid employment or take them on for a job.
2. verbTo pay for the temporary use of equipment, a vehicle, or a venue.
3. nounThe act of hiring, or someone who has recently been employed.

Hire in a sentence

• verb

  The firm plans to hire three new engineers this quarter.

• verb

  They chose to hire a van for the weekend move rather than buy one.

• noun

  The new hire settled quickly into the customer support team.

• verb

  Managers were told to hire only candidates with relevant experience.

• verb

  It is cheaper to hire formal evening wear than to purchase it.

• noun

  The boat is available for hire by the hour at the marina.

Where does hire come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Hire goes back to the Old English noun hyr, meaning a payment or wage given in return for labour or the use of something, and its matching verb hyrian, 'to pay for service or use'. It belongs to a wider Germanic family: Dutch huren and German heuern both mean 'to hire', which is why English speakers traditionally talk of 'hiring' a boat or 'hiring' a worker. For centuries the word carried both ideas at once, the renting of an object and the employing of a person, and English has kept that double life right up to the present, especially in Britain. The spelling settled with a silent final 'e' that lengthens the vowel, and that vowel is precisely the trap, because 'hire' sounds identical to 'higher', the comparative of 'high'. The two words are entirely unrelated in origin, so the only reliable guide is meaning, not sound.

How the word is built

• hire (single Old English root hȳrian: to pay for use or service); no prefix or suffix

Words that sound like hire

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• higher: Greater in height, level, amount, or degree than something else.