hire

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See also: Hire and híre

English[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From Middle English hire, hyre, here, hure, from Old English hȳr (“employment for wages; pay for service; interest on money lent”), from Proto-Germanic *hūrijō (“hire”), of uncertain origin. Compare Proto-Indo-European *kūs- (“price; hire”).

Cognate with West Frisian hier (“hire”), Dutch huur (“hire”), Low German Hüre (“hire”), German Heuer (“hire”), Danish hyre (“hire”).

The verb is from Middle English hiren, heren, huren, from Old English hȳrian.

Pronunciation[edit]

Noun[edit]

hire (plural hires)

  1. Payment for the temporary use of something.
    The sign offered pedalos on hire.
  2. (obsolete) Reward, payment.
    • Bible, Luke x. 7
      The labourer is worthy of his hire.
    • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, II.viii:
      I will him reaue of armes, the victors hire, / And of that shield, more worthy of good knight; / For why should a dead dog be deckt in armour bright?
  3. The state of being hired, or having a job; employment.
    When my grandfather retired, he had over twenty mechanics in his hire.
  4. A person who has been hired, especially in a cohort.
    We pair up each of our new hires with one of our original hires.

Synonyms[edit]

Translations[edit]

Verb[edit]

hire (third-person singular simple present hires, present participle hiring, simple past and past participle hired)

  1. (transitive) To obtain the services of in return for fixed payment.
    We hired a car for two weeks because ours had broken down.
    • 1918, W. B. Maxwell, chapter 16, in The Mirror and the Lamp:
      “[…] She takes the whole thing with desperate seriousness. But the others are all easy and jovial—thinking about the good fare that is soon to be eaten, about the hired fly, about anything.”
  2. (transitive) To employ; to obtain the services of (a person) in exchange for remuneration; to give someone a job.
    The company had problems when it tried to hire more skilled workers.
    • 1898, Winston Churchill, chapter 10, in The Celebrity:
      The skipper Mr. Cooke had hired at Far Harbor was a God-fearing man with a luke warm interest in his new billet and employer, and had only been prevailed upon to take charge of the yacht after the offer of an emolument equal to half a year's sea pay of an ensign in the navy.
  3. (transitive) To exchange the services of for remuneration.
    They hired themselves out as day laborers.  They hired out their basement for Inauguration week.
  4. (transitive) To accomplish by paying for services.
    After waiting two years for her husband to finish the tiling, she decided to hire it done.
  5. (intransitive) To accept employment.
    They hired out as day laborers.

Antonyms[edit]

Derived terms[edit]

Terms derived from hire (verb)

See also[edit]

Translations[edit]

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#Translations.
Translations to be checked

Anagrams[edit]

Abron[edit]

Etymology[edit]

Compare Akan hyire (“white clay”).

Noun[edit]

hire

  1. white clay

References[edit]

  • Trutenau, Languages of the Akan Area: Papers in Western Kwa Linguistics (1976)

Basque[edit]

Pronoun[edit]

hire

  1. yours

Japanese[edit]

Romanization[edit]

hire

  1. Rōmaji transcription of ひれ

Middle Dutch[edit]

Contraction[edit]

hire

  1. Contraction of hi dāer.

Middle English[edit]

Pronoun[edit]

hire

  1. Alternative form of hir

Old English[edit]

Alternative forms[edit]

Pronunciation[edit]

Pronoun[edit]

hire

  1. Genitive of hēo
  2. Dative of hēo
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