hire

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Archived revision by DCDuring (talk | contribs) as of 19:16, 31 December 2019.
Jump to navigation Jump to search
See also: Hire and híre

English

Pronunciation

Etymology 1

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”), German Low German Hüre (“hire”), German Heuer (“hire”), Danish hyre (“hire”).

Noun

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
Derived terms
Translations

Etymology 2

From Middle English hiren, heren, huren, from Old English hȳrian (“to hire”), from the noun (see above). Compare West Frisian hiere (“to rent, hire”), Dutch huren (“to hire”), German heuern (“to hire”), Danish hyre (“to hire”).

Eclipsed Middle English souden (“to hire, employ, enlist”), borrowed from Old French souder, soudre, souldre (“to take into employ, pay”); see English sold (“salary, military pay”).

Verb

Lua error in Module:en-headword at line 1152: Legacy parameter 1=STEM no longer supported, just use 'en-verb' without params

  1. (transitive) To obtain the services of in return for fixed payment.
    Synonym: rent
    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
Derived terms
Terms derived from hire (verb)

Template:rel-mid

Translations
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
See also

Anagrams

Abron

Etymology

From Akan hyire (“white clay”).

Noun

hire

  1. white clay

References

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

Basque

Pronoun

hire

  1. yours

Japanese

Romanization

hire

  1. Rōmaji transcription of ひれ

Middle Dutch

Contraction

hire

  1. Contraction of hi dāer.

Middle English

Etymology 1

From Old English hiere (“her”), from Proto-Germanic *hezōi, dative singular plural of *hiz (“this”), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱe (“here; this”).

Alternative forms

Determiner

hire (nominative pronoun sche)

  1. Third-person singular feminine genitive determiner: her, of her.
  2. Used in place of the possessive suffix -es to denote possession by an antecedent noun.
    • 1430, Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, "The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale.
      Here begynnyt the wyf of bathe hir tale.
Synonyms
Descendants
  • Scots: her
  • English: her

Pronoun

hire (nominative sche)

  1. Third-person singular feminine genitive pronoun: hers.
Synonyms

References

Alternative forms

Etymology 2

From Old English hire.

Pronoun

hire (nominative sche)

  1. Third-person singular feminine pronoun indicating a grammatical object: her.
  2. (reflexive) herself.
  3. Third-person singular neuter pronoun indicating a grammatical object: it.
See also

References

Etymology 3

From Old English here.

Noun

hire

  1. Alternative form of here (“army”)

Norwegian Nynorsk

Adjective

hire

  1. neuter singular of hiren

Old English

Alternative forms

Pronoun

hire

  1. genitive/dative of hēo

Descendants

Retrieved from "https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=hire&oldid=58268202"