Hiring

How to spell hiring

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce hiring

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does hiring mean?

1. verbTaking someone on for paid work, or paying for the temporary use of something.

Hiring in a sentence

• The company is hiring three new engineers this quarter.

• Hiring a reliable contractor saved us weeks of delays.

Where does hiring come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from the Old English verb 'hyrian', which meant to engage someone or something in return for payment of wages or rent. It belongs to the Germanic family of languages, with close relatives in Old Frisian 'hera' and Dutch 'huren', all carrying the sense of paying for the temporary use of a person's labour or of property. For centuries the word covered both employing people and renting goods or horses, a breadth that still survives in British usage where you can 'hire' a car. The modern participle is formed by adding -ing to 'hire', and because the base ends in a silent e, that e is dropped, giving 'hiring' rather than the tempting but wrong 'hireing'. That dropped-e rule is the only real spelling hazard the word presents.

How the word is built

• hire (to employ for wages)
• -ing (verb/gerund suffix; the silent e of 'hire' is dropped before -ing)