hireling.
An employee who is hired, often to perform unpleasant tasks with little independence.
Meaning & usage
An employee who is hired, often to perform unpleasant tasks with little independence.
Someone who does a job purely for money, rather than out of interest in the work itself.
A horse for hire.
A prostitute.
Where this word comes from
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.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.