hireling

C2+ Topic:People & Society

US /ˈhaɪərlɪŋ/ UK /ˈhaɪəlɪŋ/ See IPA manual

Meanings

1

noun
a person who works only for pay, with implied lack of loyalty

He dismissed the guards as mere hirelings without honour.

Thesaurus

Synonyms

1 noun · a person who works only for... mercenary employee lackeyhenchmanminionstooge

Word family

Related forms hire hirer

Etymology

From Old English hȳrling, from hȳr ('hire, wages, payment') + the diminutive/agentive suffix -ling, often with a disparaging connotation.

hȳr Old English *hūzijō Proto-Germanic

View etymology graph ->

Topics

People & Society Word Formation & Derivatives

External links

# hireling

**Type:** Word
**Level:** C2+
**Part of speech:** noun
**IPA (US):** /ˈhaɪərlɪŋ/
**IPA (UK):** /ˈhaɪəlɪŋ/

## Meanings
1. a person who works only for pay, with implied lack of loyalty

## Examples
- He dismissed the guards as mere hirelings without honour.

## Synonyms
- mercenary
- employee
- lackey
- henchman
- minion
- stooge

## Related Forms
- hire
- hirer

## Roots and Affixes
- Root: hȳr
- Root: *hūzijō

## Etymology
From Old English hȳrling, from hȳr ('hire, wages, payment') + the diminutive/agentive suffix -ling, often with a disparaging connotation.

## AI Etymology
hireling comes from Old English hȳrling, from hȳr ('hire, wages, payment') + the diminutive/agentive suffix -ling, often with a disparaging connotation. Morphologically, the ending is part of the etymology: the suffix is attached to the older base named in the history, producing a later English derivative. In present English, the noun sense is "a person who works only for pay, with implied lack of loyalty", so the historical development ends in a clearly identifiable modern dictionary use. The same base also appears in related forms such as hire and hirer. Its semantic neighborhood includes mercenary, employee, lackey, and henchman, which helps locate the modern sense without adding a separate etymological claim. The named historical forms include Old English hȳr and Proto-Germanic *hūzijō.

## Topics
- People & Society
- Word Formation & Derivatives

markdown