employee
Americannoun
noun
Usage
What does employee mean? An employee is someone who gets paid to work for a person or company. Workers don’t need to work full time to be considered employees—they simply need to be paid to work by an employer (the person or business that pays them). The term employee is sometimes used to distinguish contract workers from full employees (who often earn additional benefits), but in this example, both types of workers are considered employees in the general sense. Example: My company has more than 500 employees.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Etymology
Origin of employee
First recorded in 1825–35; from French employé “employed,” past participle of employer to employ; see -ee
Explanation
An employee is someone who's hired to do a particular job for pay. If you like to shop in a certain store, you might also enjoy being an employee there. You can see the verb employ, meaning "put to use," in employee. You can employ a pen in writing a letter, just as a grocery store might employ workers to collect the shopping carts from the parking lot. A person who is put to work is an employee. Employee implies that the worker reports to a boss, and it's most commonly used for non-executives who work for a salary.
Vocabulary lists containing employee
"Dogs at Work"
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Vocabulary for the Naturalization Interview
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Units 6–7
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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.
Despite all that, Bores, a former employee of surveillance tech giant Palantir, insists he’s not against A.I.—he’s just trying to make it work for those of us still stubbornly clinging to our carbon-based brains.
From Slate • Jun. 2, 2026
The Gates spokesperson said he didn’t have “an inappropriate relationship with any employee of TerraPower.”
From The Wall Street Journal • Jun. 1, 2026
Muir, additionally, pointed to a recent Axios report that one company had spent $500 million in a single month because no limits had been placed on employee Claude usage.
From MarketWatch • Jun. 1, 2026
Accompanied by an alleged informant, Magane said they asked an employee to open the container so they could "verify the information".
From BBC • May 30, 2026
A girl sat on the piercing stool while an employee steadied the gun.
From "The First State of Being" by Erin Entrada Kelly
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.
