Showing results for "employed"

• past tense form of employ.
• past participle of employ.

employed

American  

[em-ploid] / ɛmˈplɔɪd /

adjective

1. given employment, or paid work; hired, especially permanently by inclusion on a payroll.

   The comedy revolves around a beauty salon owner and her newly employed male stylist.

2. applied or used; made use of.

   In the study, drilling with flashcards was the least frequently employed strategy for language learning.

3. kept busy or engaged with some work or activity.

   I never feel usefully employed in science except when I'm actually gathering data.

4. (of time, energies, etc.) occupied; devoted to some pursuit.

   Working on my quilt gave me many happily employed hours.

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verb

1. the simple past tense and past participle of employ.

Other Word Forms

• de-employed
  adjective
• well-employed
  adjective

Etymology

Origin of employed

First recorded in 1560–70; employ ( def. ) + -ed ² ( def. ) for the adjective senses; employ ( def. ) + -ed ¹ ( def. ) for the verb sense

Explanation

Someone who's employed has a job or is busy with something. Some people believe that employed teenagers get themselves in less trouble than those without jobs. If you're working, you're employed. Most employed people work traditional full-time jobs, although an increasing number of them are freelancers or have part-time positions. Another way to use this adjective is to mean "used," as when you say, "The employed methods for keeping the classroom calm seem a little extreme to me." The adjective employed comes from the related verb, employ, "use, apply, occupy, or hire."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

employed

Although his wife was still employed, he said the couple struggled financially and found they were unable to access some forms of support.

From BBC ● Oct. 13, 2026

Both she and Oliver are retired “Helperbots,” human-like robots who were once employed, if that’s the word, as assistants to flesh-and-blood people.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 10, 2026

According to prosecutors, Rush, while employed by the CIA, created a fictitious classified program to obtain government funds and then used them for his personal benefit.

From Barron's ● Oct. 6, 2026

The overacting is exhausting because it’s not only Iñárritu’s creative choice, but rather the methods employed by the play-within-a-movie’s director.

From Salon ● Oct. 5, 2026

All they knew was that Wall Street investment banks apparently employed people to do nothing but game the rating agencies’ models.

From "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis

Related Words

• engaged
• hired
• occupied