employ
Americanverb (used with object)
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employs,
present (3rd person singular)
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employed,
past participle, past
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employing
present participle
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to hire or engage the services of (a person or persons); provide employment for; have or keep in one's service.
This factory employs thousands of people.
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to make use of (an instrument, means, etc.); use; apply.
We employ objective and scientific methods to analyze all management areas.
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to keep busy or at work; engage the attentions of.
He employs himself by reading after work.
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to occupy or devote (time, energies, etc.).
I employ my spare time in reading. I employ all my energies in writing.
noun
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employs
plural
verb
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to engage or make use of the services of (a person) in return for money; hire
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to provide work or occupation for; keep busy; occupy
collecting stamps employs a lot of his time
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to use as a means
to employ secret measures to get one's ends
noun
Usage
What does employ mean? To employ someone is to pay them to work. An employer employs employees. The state of being employed is employment. A more specific use of employ is as a noun meaning employment or service. This sense of the word is almost always used in phrases like in their employ. Employ also means to use, as in This task will require you to employ a different skill set. Less commonly, employ can mean to keep one busy or occupy one, as in During flights I usually employ myself with some knitting. Example: My company employs more than 500 people.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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employabilitynoun
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overemployverb (used with object)
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preemployverb (used with object)
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reemployverb (used with object)
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employableadjective
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nonemployingadjective
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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employsimple
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employssimple
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have employedperfect
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has employedperfect
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am employingprogressive
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are employingprogressive
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is employingprogressive
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have been employingperfect progressive
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has been employingperfect progressive
Past
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employedsimple
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had employedperfect
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was employingprogressive
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were employingprogressive
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had been employingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of employ
First recorded in 1425–75; late Middle English employen, from Anglo-French, Middle French emploier, ultimately derived from Latin implicāre “to enfold” ( Late Latin: “to engage”); see implicate
Explanation
To employ means to use something or hire someone to work. You can employ a saw to cut a board or employ a tutor to teach you math. You can even employ your talents in study and activities. The Latin source of employ is the word implicāre, which literally means to enfold or be connected with. This ties in with the verb employ, which is transitive and needs a direct object. (You can't just say "I will employ — you have to employ something.) The word also suggests using something for a specific purpose: you can employ someone for a job or find something in which to employ your own interests.
Vocabulary lists containing employ
Jim Burke's Academic Vocabulary List
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"To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee, Chapters 1–6
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The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Since Steam’s 1969 hit and “Hey Jude” both employ a common non-lexical vocable, it follows that sports fans in their home countries have adopted each for their own purposes.
From Salon ● Sep. 13, 2026
Though the days of urgent pleas to reduce power use in the hopes of preventing major outages appear to be largely over in California, local utilities still employ public safety power shutoffs.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 11, 2026
The new private investment will help with renewable energy and create "new industries that are likely to employ future generations", Mookhey says.
From BBC ● Sep. 3, 2026
Downstream aluminum fabricators in the U.S. generate more than 75% of the industry’s $41.3 billion in earnings and employ up to 97% of its workers.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 31, 2026
She amused herself by reflecting on the means he might employ.
From "And Then There Were None" by Agatha Christie
It employs 169 people in total, including more than 45 full-time lobbyists.
From Barron's ● Sep. 11, 2026
Allocators may require higher yields before moving wholesale into bonds, regardless of what measures the Treasury Department employs in the market to cap yields.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 11, 2026
The Montreal-based company already operates a factory in the US state of Kansas that builds special mission military planes, and employs 3,500 American workers.
From BBC ● Sep. 7, 2026
It employs many of Wolfsburg’s roughly 130,000 residents on terms negotiated by the works council, including service functions such as kitchen staff that have long been outsourced at other companies.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 2, 2026
Today the company employs about 200,000 people worldwide, most of whom are complete strangers to each other.
From "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari
A baseball grandstand burned down last year, and in March, a lumber mill that employed about 30 people caught fire.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 13, 2026
Because he is still employed, he might not know that his work isn’t the quality you desire.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 10, 2026
Just three years ago, Kioshi employed nearly 120 people and produced 40,000 pairs of sneaker and flip-flops a month in the south of Buenos Aires.
From Barron's ● Sep. 10, 2026
He said Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband was "living in a different universe", and argued that the main group who would face hardship as a result were the hundreds of Palestinians who were employed in them.
From BBC ● Sep. 9, 2026
Though only sixteen years old, she was an experienced and capable governess, previously employed at Ashton Place, where she had cared for the three wards of Lord Fredrick Ashton.
From "The Long-Lost Home" by Maryrose Wood
Even the H-2A legal process for hiring seasonal foreign workers “would likely be more expensive than employing undocumented workers.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 9, 2026
Some transplant clinics are employing Turkish specialists – others are actually branches of businesses based in Turkey.
From BBC ● Sep. 8, 2026
Even people who work at these companies, or who run them, seem to understand this, but that hasn’t stopped them from employing every tactic possible to avoid responsibility.
From Salon ● Sep. 5, 2026
By employing a mix of internal and external models, “Microsoft can reserve the largest and most expensive models for complex tasks while serving high-volume, product-specific workloads more efficiently,” Liani wrote.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 1, 2026
Virginians were also the most adept at employing what Adams called “puffers,” what we would call “spinners” or public-relations experts.
From "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation" by Joseph J. Ellis
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
