hireling

noun

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.

1. 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?”

2. 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.”

3. A horse for hire.

   “In the afternoon they went to a neighbouring livery stables to look for hirellings.”

4. A prostitute.