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say it: em-PLOY
employ is a verb and noun meaning "put into service; make work or employ for a particular purpose or for its inherent or natural purpose". It carries 3 recorded senses.
put into service; make work or employ for a particular purpose or for its inherent or natural purpose
“use your head!”
“we only use Spanish at home”
“I can't use this tool”
“Apply a magnetic field here”
“This thinking was applied to many projects”
“How do you utilize this tool?”
“I apply this rule to get good results”
“use the plastic bags to store the food”
“He doesn't know how to use a computer”
engage or hire for work
“They hired two new secretaries in the department”
“How many people has she employed?”
the state of being employed or having a job
“they are looking for employment”
“he was in the employ of the city”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for employ come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.