- 1僱工（貶；誰給錢就替誰做。不是中性的「員工」）
A hireling is someone who works because they are paid, and the speaker does not respect that. The word points a finger: this person will work for anyone who pays, and will leave when the money stops. You find it in older books, in the Bible, and in angry talk about soldiers or who have no side of their own. A shop worker or a teacher you hired is not a hireling; hireling is a put-down. Though actually the oldest English was kinder, closer to a person who works for pay; the sour taste grew later. It is not a normal office word now. If people mean a fighter who will work for any side, they are more likely to say mercenary. Hireling sounds like a page in an old story, and a cold one.
組成hire + -ling (a person linked to that thing). From Middle English hirlyng, from Old English hȳrling.
原始詞典資料4 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
hirelingnoun/ˈhaɪ.ə.lɪŋ/
- 1
derogatoryAn 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?
- 2
derogatorySomeone 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.
- 3
A horse for hire.
- In the afternoon they went to a neighbouring livery stables to look for hirellings.
- 4
obsoleteA prostitute.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。