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employee

noun

Simple meaning

A person who works for a business or another person in return for pay.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

ehmployee

Say the bold part a little louder.

US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ɛmpˈlɔɪi

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. A person who provides labor to a company or another person.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
A2 · Elementary
Frequency
Very Common
Typical Use
Everyday English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: A person who provides labor to a company or another person.

Used this way, employee is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in business or professional contexts.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Matter-of-fact
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Where it naturally appears

  • Business/professional

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

More ways to use employee

  • “One way to encourage your employees to work harder is by giving them incentives.”noun

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

employee benefitnew employeeemployee relationsformer employeepublic employeeindividual employeegovernment employee

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • employee-owned enterprisenounCompound term

    A commercial enterprise owned by the people who work for it.

  • employee ownershipnounCompound term

    Ownership of a business by the people who work for it.

  • employee savings plannounCompound term

    A plan that allows employees to contribute to an investment pool managed the employer.

  • employee stock ownership plannounCompound term

    A program under which employees regularly accumulate shares and may ultimately assume control of the company.

  • employee turnovernounCompound term

    The ratio of the number of workers that had to be replaced in a given time period to the average number of workers.

  • employee-owned businessnounCompound term

    A commercial enterprise owned by the people who work for it.

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.