Other forms: engaged, engaging, engages
To engage someone is to catch their attention and hold it, so they are drawn in rather than sitting there being polite. A teacher who engages a bored class, a book that engages you from the first page.
It reaches a long way past that. You engage in an activity and engage with a problem or an idea — those two prepositions do different jobs, and swapping them sounds wrong. In formal writing a company engages a lawyer, which means hires one. Machine parts engage when they slot together and start driving each other: the gear engages with a clunk. Soldiers engage the enemy when the shooting starts. And the past participle has a life of its own — engaged means promised in marriage, and an engaged phone line or an engaged toilet door means occupied.
1verbengageTo attract somebody's attention and interest and keep hold of it.
“The exhibition engages children who normally hate museums.”
2verbtakeTo take part in something, or to deal with it seriously. Used with in or with.
“She refused to engage with the question at all.”
3verbhireTo hire somebody to do a job. Formal.
“The family engaged a lawyer to handle the sale.”
4verbmachineOf machine parts: to fit together so that one drives the other.
“The gear engages as soon as you let the clutch out.”
5verbbeginTo begin fighting with an enemy.
“The fleet engaged the enemy at first light.”
Engage came through Middle English engagen from Old French engagier, to pledge — en- plus gage, a pledge — and behind that Frankish wadi and the Proto-Indo-European root wedh-, to pledge or redeem a pledge. The same root gives English wed. So getting engaged is no metaphor: the word has meant giving your word all along.
Proto-Indo-European
*wedʰ-
Old French
engagier — to pledge, engage
Middle English
engagen
English, today
engage
Built from
From Middle English engagen, from Old French engagier (“to pledge, engage”), from Old French en- (“in, under”) + gage (“pledge”), from Frankish wadi (“pledge”), from Proto-Germanic wadją (“pledge, guarantee”), from Proto-Indo-European wedʰ- (“to pledge, redeem a pledge; guarantee, bail”), equivalent to en- + gage. Cognate with Old English weddian (“to engage, covenant, undertake”), German wetten (“to bet, wager”), Icelandic veðja (“to wager”). More at wed.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA