Meaning & use
employ
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Meanings
verbtransitive
To pay someone to work for you.
Grammar: Takes a person as object: the firm employs 200 people.
Patterns
- employ someone as something
- employ someone to do something
The hospital employs over two thousand nurses.
She was employed as a translator for three years.
They employed a plumber to fix the leak.
verbtransitiveformal
To make use of a method, tool, skill or word for a particular purpose.
Grammar: Takes a thing as object, and sounds more formal than use: employ a technique.
Patterns
- employ something to do something
- employ something in something
The writer employs humor to soften difficult subjects.
Police employed tear gas to break up the crowd.
Skilled carvers employ simple hand tools.
nounsingularformalold-fashioned
The condition of working for an employer, found mainly in the phrase in the employ of.
Grammar: Fixed and formal: in someone's employ.
Patterns
- in the employ of someone
He had been in the employ of the bank for decades.
The butler remained in her employ until she died.
Word forms
| third person singular | employs |
|---|---|
| past tense | employed |
| past participle | employed |
| -ing form | employing |
Common combinations
- employ staff
- The company employs staff in six countries.
- employ a strategy
- The team employed a new strategy in the second half.
- employ someone as
- The museum employed her as a guide.
- employ a technique
- Painters employ many techniques to show light.
- gainfully employed
- Is he gainfully employed these days?
Synonyms and how they differ
- hire
- Hire is the casual word for giving someone a job, and focuses on the moment of recruiting.
- use
- Use is plainer and more common than employ when a method or tool is meant.
- utilize
- Utilize suggests using something effectively for a practical purpose, and sounds technical.
- engage
- Engage suggests arranging someone's services, often for a particular job.
Opposites
Word family
- employee noun
- a person who works for pay
- employer noun
- a person or company that pays workers
- employment noun
- paid work, or the act of employing
- employable adjective
- having skills that employers want
- unemployed adjective
- without a job
Commonly confused: employ or imply?
employ vs imply
Imply sounds similar but means to suggest indirectly; employ means to hire or use.
Practice
The small bakery ___ twelve people, most of them local students.
Choose one answer.
A verb is needed with 'bakery' as the subject, and employs fits. 'Employees' and the others are nouns.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “employ”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.