hire
pronunciation
How to pronounce hire in British English:
UK [ˈhaɪə(r)]
How to pronounce hire in American English:
US [ˈhaɪər]
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- Verb:
- engage or hire for work
- hold under a lease or rental agreement; of goods and services
- engage for service under a term of contract
Word Origin
- hire
- hire: [OE] Hire probably originated in North Germany, in the area where the set of dialects known as Low German was spoken. It comes from a prehistoric *khūr-, which also produced Dutch huren (Swedish hyra and Danish hyre were borrowed from Low German).
- hire (v.)
- Old English hyrian "pay for service, employ for wages, engage," from Proto-Germanic *hurjan (cognates: Danish hyre, Old Frisian hera, Dutch huren, German heuern "to hire, rent"). Reflexively, "to agree to work for wages" from mid-13c. Related: Hired; hiring.
- hire (n.)
- "payment for work, use, or services; wages," from Old English hyr "wages; interest, usury," from Proto-Germanic *hurja- (see hire (v.)).
Example
- 1. Maybe we hire an extra ten people .
- 2. Yet employers can refuse to hire left-handers with impunity .
- 3. But they can rarely afford to hire number-crunchers .
- 4. He made his first hire in california last week .
- 5. Cloud computing enables it to hire massive number-crunching capacity whenever it needs it .