hireling
noun/ˈhaɪ.ə.lɪŋ/UK/ˈhaɪɹˌlɪŋ/US
Etymology
From Middle English hirlyng, from Old English hȳrling (“hireling, employee”), from Proto-West Germanic *hūʀijuling. Cognate with West Frisian hierling, Dutch huurling (“hireling, mercenary”), German Low German Hüürling, German Heuerling. By surface analysis, hire + -ling.
- inherited from *hūʀijuling✻
- inherited from hirlyng
Definitions
An employee who is hired, often to perform unpleasant tasks with little independence.
- Is there not an appointed time to man vpon earth? are not his dayes alſo like the dayes of an hireling?
- When my poor James was in the small-pox, did I allow any hireling to nurse him?
Someone who does a job purely for money, rather than out of interest in the work itself.
- […]it may bee truely affirmed, that no kinde of men loue buſineſſe for it ſelfe, but thoſe that are learned; for other perſons loue it for profite; as an hireling that loues the worke for the wages;
- These vain bickerings / Are spawn'd in courts by base intrigues and baser / Hirelings, who live by lies on good men's lives.
A horse for hire.
- In the afternoon they went to a neighbouring livery stables to look for hirellings.
›+ 1 more definitionshow fewer
A prostitute.
The neighborhood
Vish — recursive loop
No curated loop yet for hireling. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.
sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA