employ

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   the state of being employed or having a job

   they are looking for employment

2. 2
   verb

   put into service

   make work or employ for a particular purpose or for its inherent or natural purpose

3. 3
   verb

   To retain (someone) as an employee.

   Our company employs hundreds of people.

4. 4
   verb

   To provide (someone) with a new job; to hire.

   Yesterday our local garage employed a new mechanic.

5. 5
   verb

   To use (someone or something) for a job or task.

   The burglar employed a jemmy to get in.

6. 6
   verb

   To make busy; to preoccupy.

   Let it not enter in your minde of loue: / Be merry, and imploy your chiefeſt thoughts / To courtſhip, and ſuch faire oſtents of loue / As ſhall conueniently become you there;

7. 7
   noun

   The state of being an employee; employment.

   The school district has six thousand teachers in its employ.

8. 8
   noun

   An occupation.

   Still he wrote on. He was too much engrossed in his own charmed employ not to be insensible for a time to all external influences: he might suffer afterwards, but now his mind was his kingdom.

Etymology

From late Middle English emploien, imploien, emplien (“to apply to a specific purpose”), from Anglo-Norman emploier, Old French emploiier (“to entangle, fabricate, to make use of”), ultimately from Latin implicāre (“to infold, entangle, involve, engage”), from in- (“in”) + plicāre (“to fold”). Doublet of imply and implicate.