hire

UK/ˈhaɪ(.)ə/US/ˈhaɪɹ/

verbA25 meanings Very common — you will meet it every day · #1,249 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: hired, hiring, hires

To hire someone is to take them on and pay them to work for you. A café hiring two extra people for the summer; a firm that hires three engineers in a month.

In Britain the word does a second job that Americans give to rent: you hire a car for the weekend, hire a suit for a wedding, hire a van to shift a sofa. A taxi with its light on is for hire. Hire out runs the other way, since the village hall hires out its chairs to anyone with twenty pounds. In American English a hire is a person — two new hires started on Monday. Mind the line between the two: even in Britain you rent a flat rather than hire one, because hiring is short and renting is long.

Definitions of hire

1verbhireTo give someone a job and pay them to do it.A2~53%
“They hired her the week after the interview.”
synonyms: employ, recruit, take on
2verbshortTo pay to use something for a short time, in British use.A2~2%
“We hired bikes for the afternoon.”
3verbreturnTo let someone use something of yours in return for payment.B2~2%
“The school hires out its pool on Sundays.”
4nounactThe act of paying to use something for a period of time.B1~38%
“Boat hire is ten pounds an hour.”
5noungivenA person who has just been given a job, chiefly in American use.B2~5%
“The new hire spent her first day reading old files.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 20 sentences found in the wild and placed 20 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Also accepted in games: employ, recruit

Phrases it lives in

for hire — available to be paid for, said of a taxi or a service
hire purchase — a British way of buying something in instalments, with the seller keeping ownership until the last one

Where it comes from

Hire is Old English hȳr, and it named the money rather than the person: wages, payment for service, even interest on a loan. Proto-West Germanic had *hūʀiju, payment, from the verb behind Proto-Germanic *hūzijaną. Dutch huur and Low German Hüür still mean rent, a reminder that the word was always about paying for the use of something, whether that something is a van or an hour of somebody's time.

Proto-Indo-European
*kewHs-
Proto-Germanic
*hūzijaną
Proto-West Germanic
*hūʀiju — payment
Old English
hȳr — employment for wages; pay for service; interest on money lent
Middle English
hire
English, today
hire

From Middle English hire, hyre, here, hure, from Old English hȳr (“employment for wages; pay for service; interest on money lent”), from Proto-West Germanic hūʀiju (“payment”), from the verb hūʀijan, from Proto-Germanic hūzijaną, from Proto-Indo-European kewHs- or kweHs-. Compare hit 𒆪𒊭𒀭 (“fee, pay, wages, price”). Cognate with West Frisian hier (“hire”), Dutch huur (“lease, rental”), German Low German Hüür (“lease, rental”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Work & Careers, A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 8 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

hire in the wild

Santander Cycles (formerly Barclays Cycle Hire) is a public bicycle hire scheme in London in the United Kingdom.
Santander Cycles
Influence-for-hire or collective influence, refers to the economy that has emerged around buying and selling influence on social media platforms.
Influence-for-hire
In a union shop, the union must accept as a member any person hired by the employer.
Closed shop
Labour hire arrangements are situations in which an employee has a legal employer, but no direct employment contract with the place of work.
Labour hire (Australia)
EDRF funding allows grantees to hire lawyers (at a legal aid rate) from the private bar.
Environmental Dispute Resolution Fund

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

Definitions of hire

1verbhireTo give someone a job and pay them to do it.A2~53%

“They hired her the week after the interview.”

synonyms: employ, recruit, take on

2verbshortTo pay to use something for a short time, in British use.A2~2%

“We hired bikes for the afternoon.”

3verbreturnTo let someone use something of yours in return for payment.B2~2%

“The school hires out its pool on Sundays.”

4nounactThe act of paying to use something for a period of time.B1~38%

“Boat hire is ten pounds an hour.”

5noungivenA person who has just been given a job, chiefly in American use.B2~5%

“The new hire spent her first day reading old files.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 20 sentences found in the wild and placed 20 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Also accepted in games: employ, recruit