These words refer to taking on someone to fill a job. Hire is the most informal of these and, because of this may apply most naturally to a wage-earning rather than a salaried worker: hiring three new waitresses. The word, however, is often used of more exalted positions: hiring a new managing editor. Sometimes, the word suggests taking on someone for a specific or one-time job: hiring a plumber to install the new washing machine; hired to kill the rival racketeer. The word’s brevity allows its use, as well, to refer to the general practice of filling vacancies: a department set up to take care of hiring and firing. Employ is a more formal substitute for hire and is sometimes used for positions of greater prestige: employing him as guidance counsellor. In governmental and official terminology, the word universally replaces hire: urging businesses to employ the handicapped. The word goes beyond hire in referring not just to the initial taking on of someone but to his continued used. Thus, employ , which euphemistic for other sense of hire and often for the simple act of hiring , is free of such a tone in this case: a firm that employed a staff of two hundred people; asking when he was last employed .

Engage seems unnecessarily indirect when used as a substitute for hire or employ in their most common senses. The word has pertinence, however, in referring to a specific or one-time contracting for someone’s services, especially when these are of a professional nature: engaging a gardener to mow her lawn once a week; engaging a lawyer to argue his case in court. The word, like employ , may also refer to someone actually at work, especially in fields where work comes in spurts: engaging extra summer help.

Call up , conscript , enlist and recruit have special relevance to serving in the armed forces. Call up and conscript are used exclusively in this sense, and always carry the implication of service that is compulsory or involuntary: calling up national-service trainees; protesting against being conscripted. The other two words are widely used outside a military context. Recruit contrasts sharply with call up and conscript in indicating an appeal for volunteers to undertake a task or position, not necessarily for pay: special training programmes that made it easy to recruit young men into the air force; recruiting neighbours to help put out the fire. Used transitively, enlist is a more general substitute for recruit ; it may suggest seeking monetary or moral support as well as the actual acquiring of someone’s services: enlisting university graduates in the long-term government project; enlisti ng your help in the coming election. Used intransitively, the word indicates volunteering for an assignment: enlisting in the army rather than waiting to be called up . A confusion sometimes results because new arrivals or trainees in the armed forces, whether recruited or conscripted, are known as recruits .

Draft is the American equivalent of our call up , but is universally used in another military context – that of allocating a force to a theatre of war or to a likely trouble-spot: an infantry battalion drafted to Malaysia. The word is used also in a general sense, in which the connotation of compulsory assignment is carried over: drafting several club members to clear away the chairs after the meeting. As in the last example, this word need not suggest working for pay, unlike the usual implications of hire , employ and engage .