employ

1. 1

   To retain (someone) as an employee.

   • Our company employs hundreds of people.
   • Andrew Houſtoun and Adam Muſhet, being Tackſmen of the Excize, did Imploy Thomas Rue to be their Collector, and gave him a Sallary of 30. pound Sterling for a year.
2. 2

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

   • Yesterday our local garage employed a new mechanic.
3. 3

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

   • The burglar employed a jemmy to get in.
4. 4

   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;
   • I heard the woods, and distant waters, roar; / Or heard them not, as happy as a Boy: / The pleasant season did my heart employ:

syn. apply · appoint · bestow · brook · commission · commit · employ · exercise · exploit · handle · make use · ply

ant. discard · disuse · shun · surrender

1. 1

   The state of being an employee; employment.

   • The school district has six thousand teachers in its employ.
2. 2

   An occupation.archaic

   • 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.
3. 3

   The act of employing someone or making use of something; employment.obsolete

   • Notwithstanding the employ of general and local bleeding, blisters, &c., the patient died on the fourth day after entrance.