hire

From Middle English hire, hyre, here, hure, from Old English hȳr (“employment for wages; pay for service; interest on money lent”), from Proto-Germanic *hūrijō (“hire”), of uncertain origin. Compare Proto-Indo-European *kūs- (“price; hire”).

Cognate with West Frisian hier (“hire”), Dutch huur (“hire”), German Low German Hüre (“hire”), German Heuer (“hire”), Danish hyre (“hire”).

The verb is from Middle English hiren, heren, huren, from Old English hȳrian.

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: hīr, hīʹər, IPA^(key): /haɪə/, /ˈhaɪə/
• (General American) enPR: hīr, hīʹər, IPA^(key): /haɪɹ/, /ˈhaɪɚ/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -aɪə(ɹ)
• Homophone: higher

hire (plural hires)

1. Payment for the temporary use of something.

   The sign offered pedalos on hire.

2. (obsolete) Reward, payment.
   • Bible, Luke x. 7

     The labourer is worthy of his hire.

   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, II.viii:

     I will him reaue of armes, the victors hire, / And of that shield, more worthy of good knight; / For why should a dead dog be deckt in armour bright?

3. The state of being hired, or having a job; employment.

   When my grandfather retired, he had over twenty mechanics in his hire.

4. A person who has been hired, especially in a cohort.

   We pair up each of our new hires with one of our original hires.

• (state of being hired): employment, employ

• hireling
• hireman

hire (third-person singular simple present hires, present participle hiring, simple past and past participle hired)

1. (transitive) To obtain the services of in return for fixed payment.

   We hired a car for two weeks because ours had broken down.

   • 1918, W. B. Maxwell, chapter 16, in The Mirror and the Lamp:

     “[…] She takes the whole thing with desperate seriousness. But the others are all easy and jovial—thinking about the good fare that is soon to be eaten, about the hired fly, about anything.”

2. (transitive) To employ; to obtain the services of (a person) in exchange for remuneration; to give someone a job.

   The company had problems when it tried to hire more skilled workers.

   • 1898, Winston Churchill, chapter 10, in The Celebrity:

     The skipper Mr. Cooke had hired at Far Harbor was a God-fearing man with a luke warm interest in his new billet and employer, and had only been prevailed upon to take charge of the yacht after the offer of an emolument equal to half a year's sea pay of an ensign in the navy.

3. (transitive) To exchange the services of for remuneration.

   They hired themselves out as day laborers.  They hired out their basement for Inauguration week.

4. (transitive) To accomplish by paying for services.

   After waiting two years for her husband to finish the tiling, she decided to hire it done.

5. (intransitive) To accept employment.

   They hired out as day laborers.

• (to employ): fire

• rent

• ReHi, heir, rehi

Compare Akan hyire (“white clay”).

hire

1. white clay

• Trutenau, Languages of the Akan Area: Papers in Western Kwa Linguistics (1976)

hire

1. yours

hire

1. Rōmaji transcription of ひれ

hire

1. Contraction of hi dāer.

From Old English hiere (“her”), from Proto-Germanic *hezōi, dative singular plural of *hiz (“this”), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱe (“here; this”).

• hir, hyre, hyr, ire, ir, here, her, ere, er, heyre, heore, hare, hure, hur, hurre, huere

hire (nominative pronoun sche)

1. Third-person singular feminine genitive determiner: her, of her.
2. Used in place of the possessive suffix -es to denote possession by an antecedent noun.
   • 1430, Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, "The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale.

     Here begynnyt the wyf of bathe hir tale.

• his

• Scots: her
• English: her

hire (nominative sche)

1. Third-person singular feminine genitive pronoun: hers.

• hires

• “hir, (pron.1)” in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 10 May 2018.

• hir, hyre, hyr, ire, ir, here, her, er, heir, herre, heore, hor, hare, hure, hur, hurre, huere

From Old English hire.

hire (nominative sche)

1. Third-person singular feminine pronoun indicating a grammatical object: her.
2. (reflexive) herself.
3. Third-person singular neuter pronoun indicating a grammatical object: it.

• his

• “hir(e), pron (2)” in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 10 June 2018.

From Old English here.

hire

1. Alternative form of here (“army”)

hire

1. neuter singular of hiren

• hiere

• IPA^(key): /ˈhire/

hire

1. Genitive of hēo
2. Dative of hēo