employ

verb

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.”

   “Charles had not been employed above six months at Darracott Place, but he was not such a whopstraw as to make the least noise in the performance of his duties when his lordship was out of humour.”

   “The site—which was established in its current form in 2009—employs 60 people and says it gets 12 million visitors a month.”

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

   “Yesterday our local garage employed a new mechanic.”

   “The management, who were close personal friends, had just employed a new chef.”

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

   “The burglar employed a jemmy to get in.”

   “Valiant Othello, we muſt straight employ you, / Againſt the generall Enemy Ottoman.”

   “This is a day in which the thoughts[…]ought to be employed on serious subjects.”

   “As to eleemoſynary corporations, by the dotation the founder and his heirs are of common right the legal viſitors, to ſee that that property is rightly employed, which would otherwiſe have deſcended to the viſitor himſelf: […]”

   “Similar studies of rats have employed four different intracranial resorbable, slow sustained release systems—surgical foam, a thermal gel depot, a microcapsule or biodegradable polymer beads.”

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:”

noun

1. The state of being an employee; employment.

   “The school district has six thousand teachers in its employ.”

   “If Siamese in the employ of British subjects offend against the laws of their country,”

   ““And so you see, sir,” said I, “there is something to be said upon my side; and this gambling is a very poor employ for gentlefolks. But I am still waiting your opinion.””

2. (archaic)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.”

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

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