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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
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ASp has had the excellent idea of starting three new word-threads recently. In that spirit:
Here in the US we would speak of renting a car for the weekend, but I understand you brits would call this hiring a car. In brit-speak, what is the distinction between rent and hire?
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Joined: Feb 2002
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
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my off-the-cuff, can-speak distinction is this: you rent things, but hire people
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Joined: Jan 2001
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Many things can be hired. I remember Cal Coolidge's reply to suggestion that Britain's war debts to us be reduced, and he replied: "They hired the money didn't they?"
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 872
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 872 |
I remember Cal Coolidge's reply to suggestion that Britain's war debts to us be reduced, and he replied: "They hired the money didn't they?" -wwh Now Doc, aren't we walking too many exaggerated miles barefoot in the snow to a unheated schoolshack to be believed by the cosmopolitan people on this board? If you heard Coolidge's remarks on the British war debts on the radio in 1925, you must have been about zero years old.  By the way, Did the Brits ever paid us back?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Dear Milum: In 1925, I was seven years old. I remember listening to presidential election on the radio about that time, but never heard Coolidge.Incidentally Coolidge had more ability than you might gather from some of the slanted history books.
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 96
journeyman
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journeyman
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 96 |
Personally I would rent a hire car.
the Duncster
the Duncster
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2000
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>you rent things, but hire people
Funny, I would never hire a person, only recruit or employ them, although I might use the term "hire and fire" just because of the way it sounds. I have also seen occasional signs on windows (maybe McDonalds) saying "we're hiring" and people would understand it. Maybe that is where the main difference lies, because we do not, in general, use hire for people we do not need to use replace the term with rent when referring to things.
In running a course for management boards of voluntary organisations we used to say that the main role of the board was to hire and fire the chief executive. Sadly one useful North American philosophy for boards of voluntary organisations never really crossed the pond - "give, get or get off".
I would:
* recruit (possibly using a recruitment agency), employ, contract or "take on" a person
* hire (short term) or lease (longer term) a car (although I see that companies such as Avis and Hertz use the term "car hire and rental" to hedge their bets) - also hire: tools, clothes, bikes almost anything
* rent or lease a flat
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
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Interesting that Avis and Hertz hedge their bets in the UK by advertising "car hire and rental." In the US (and, per boronia's post, Canada as well) it's always rental. Here it's true that one hires people. Not so many years ago families who employed domestic helpers referred to them as a "hired man" or a "hired girl." (As in Robert Frost's wonderful poem "The Death of the Hired Man") These labels were commonly used in parts of New England.
In a similar vein, I wonder if the term "baby sitter" has become more or less universal. Isn't "nanny" the preferred term in the UK, or is that reserved for an ongoing arrangement? I remember when baby sitting was called "keeping house" (at least in the backwoods of NE); then in 1948 a movie called "Sitting Pretty" popularized the term baby sitter.
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Joined: Jan 2001
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Dear jmh: In US, "recruit" means to hunt for talent. But many are called, and few are chosen.
Dictionary: to seek to enroll (students) in a college, university, etc., as for the purpose of playing a varsity sport
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