A person or organization that hires people to work for them and pays them wages or salaries. Employers are responsible for managing work conditions and agreements.
From 'employ' plus the agent noun suffix '-er,' indicating the one who performs an action. The contrast with 'employee' reflects who uses and who is used (in the neutral sense of 'put to work'). The term became common with wage labor and modern business structures.
If the employee is the one 'being used,' the employer is the one 'doing the using'—in the neutral sense of using time and skills. The pair of words draws a clear line of roles in just two syllables. It’s a tiny linguistic diagram of the modern workplace.
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