Word.ws English Dictionary

staff

/stɑːf/UK[stɑːf]

staff noun: a long, straight, thick wooden rod or stick, especially one used to assist in walking. Also the misspelling of staph.

staff: a long, straight, thick wooden rod or stick, especially one used to assist in walking
Image: CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

staff (countable and uncountable, plural staffs or staves or staff)

  1. (plural staffs or staves) A long, straight, thick wooden rod or stick, especially one used to assist in walking.
    • And thus ſhall ye eate it [the lamb]: with your loines girded, your ſhooes on your feet, and your ſtaffe in your hand: and ye ſhall eate it in haſte: it is the Lords Paſſeouer.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Exodus 12:11, column 2
    • The case was that of a murder. It had an element of mystery about it, however, which was puzzling the authorities. A turban and loincloth soaked in blood had been found; also a staff.1927, F. E. Penny, chapter 4, in Pulling the Strings
  2. (plural staffs or staves) A series of horizontal lines on which musical notes are written; a stave.
  3. (plural staff or staffs) People employed by a business or other organisation.
    • The company employed 10 new members of staff this month.
    • The company has taken on 1600 more highly-paid staff.
  4. (uncountable) A mixture of plaster and fibre used as a temporary exterior wall covering.
    Synonyms:
    personnel
  5. A pole, stick, or wand borne as an ensign of authority; a badge of office.
    • a constable's staff
    • Me thought this ſtaffe mine Office-badge in Court / Was broke in twaine:1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...
  6. A pole upon which a flag is supported and displayed.
  7. (archaic) The rung of a ladder.
    • I ascend at one [ladder] of six hundred and thirty-nine staves.1739, John Campbell, The Travels and Adventures of Edward Bevan, Esq.
  8. A series of verses so disposed that, when it is concluded, the same order begins again; a stanza; a stave.
    • Mr. Cowley had found out, that no kind of Staff is proper for an Heroick Poem; as being all too lirical:1697, Virgil, “To the Most Honourable John, Lord Marquess of Normanby, Earl of Mulgrave, &c. and Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil...
    • At this point the reciter of the story chants the following staves:—
      "Oh! the Day-horse. Oh! the Day-horse,
      The Day-horse has gone to the river Gang,
      The Day-horse has floated to the Sora Sea,
      Oh! the Day-horse."1918, James George Frazer, Folk-Lore In The Old Testament, volume 1, page 20
  9. An arbor, as of a wheel or a pinion of a watch.
  10. The grooved director for the gorget, or knife, used in cutting for stone in the bladder.
  11. An establishment of officers in various departments attached to an army, to a section of an army, or to the commander of an army. The general's staff consists of those officers about his person who are employed in carrying his commands into execution.
    • At the head of that division which had Westminster Bridge for its approach to the scene of action, Lord George Gordon took his post; with Gashford at his right hand, and sundry ruffians, of most unpromising appearance, forming a kind of staff about him.1841 February–November, Charles Dickens, “Barnaby Rudge. Chapter 49.”, in Master Humphrey’s Clock, volume III, London: Chapman & Hall, […], →OCLC, page 217
  12. (archaic) A form of token once used, in combination with a ticket, for safe train movements between two points on a single line.
    • The train-staff and ticket system was used widely at one time, until superseded by electrical token systems, the first of which, the tablet system, appeared in 1878, […].1946 July and August, “Wise's Train Staff”, in Railway Magazine, page 214
    • The first up train was the morning semi-fast ex Buncrana, which sped through with No. 8 at its head, adroitly exchanging staffs at about 15 m.p.h. […] The next train through Tooban was our opposite number, and we duly received the vital staff.1949 November and December, K. Longbottom, “By Goods Train to Gweedore”, in Railway Magazine, page 355

Verb

staff (third-person singular simple present staffs, present participle staffing, simple past and past participle staffed)

  1. (transitive) To supply (a business, volunteer organization, etc.) with employees or staff members.
    • Interlaken East station is jointly owned with the standard gauge Bern-Lötschberg-Simplon Railway from Bern and Thun and the Swiss Federal Railways metre-gauge Brünig line from Lucerne, but is managed and staffed by the Bernese Oberland group.1960 December, Voyageur, “The Mountain Railways of the Bernese Oberland”, in Trains Illustrated, page 750

Also used as

staff is also the misspelling of staph.

staff meaning in Marathi, Urdu, Telugu and Malayalam

staff in Marathi

कर्मचारीवर्ग

staff in Urdu

عملہ, عملے

staff in Telugu

సిబ్బంది

staff in Malayalam

employees of a business
ജീവനക്കാരൻ jīvanakkāraṉ
More languagesFewer languages
staff in Kannada
ಸಿಬ್ಬಂದಿ, ಸಿಬ್ಬಂದಿಗಳು
staff in Punjabi
ਸਟਾਫ
staff in Gujarati
સ્ટાફ, કર્મચારીગણ, કર્મચારીવર્ગ
staff in Nepali
स्टाफ, कर्मचारीवर्ग
staff in Tagalog
kalupunan
staff in Arabic
طَاقَم ṭāqam, طَاقِم ṭāqim
staff in Malay
tongkat, kakitangan
staff in Indonesian
tongkat, paranada
staff in Persian
عصا 'asâ, پرسنل personel, کادر kâdr
staff in Thai
ตะพด dtà-pót, พนักงาน pá-nák-ngaan
staff in Vietnamese
khuông nhạc, nhân viên

Examples of staff in a sentence

  • Most staff do not have the skills to cope with such challenging patients, who too often receive "impersonal" care and suffer from boredom, the first National Audit of Dementia found.2011 December 16, Denis Campbell, “Hospital staff 'lack skills to cope with dementia patients'”, in Guardian:
  • It turns out that, in journalistic terms, and especially at the FT, where many staff see out their entire careers, seven years is nothing.2023 November 25, Rebecca Rose, “How old is too old for a profile pic?”, in FT Weekend (Life & Arts section), London: The Financial Times...
  • The unusual rolling stock, the fare collection methods, and the exchange of train staffs make it quite clear that here is something out of the ordinary run of suburban electric lines.1951 November, R. K. Kirkland, “The Wimbledon and West Croydon Line of the Southern Region”, in Railway Magazine, page 726:

All 40 example sentences with staff

Synonyms of staff

Forms of staff

Noun
pluralstaffs
pluralstaves
pluralstaff
Verb
third-person singular presentstaffs
present participlestaffing
past participlestaffed
paststaffed

Plural of staff: staffs or staves

Origin of staff

From Middle English staf, from Old English stæf (“letter of the alphabet”), from Proto-West Germanic *stab, from Proto-Germanic *stabaz. Cognate with Dutch staf, German Stab, Danish stav, Swedish stav. Sense of "group of military officers that assists a commander" and similar meanings, attested from 1702, is influenced by or is even from German Stab.

Words formed from staff

Phrases with staff

37 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with staff

Questions about staff

What does staff mean?
Staff means a long, straight, thick wooden rod or stick, especially one used to assist in walking.
What is staff in Marathi?
Staff in Marathi is कर्मचारीवर्ग. See Staff meaning in Marathi.
How do you use staff in a sentence?
Most staff do not have the skills to cope with such challenging patients, who too often receive "impersonal" care and suffer from boredom, the first National Audit of Dementia found.
What part of speech is staff?
Staff can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce staff?
Staff is pronounced /stɑːf/.
What is the plural of staff?
The plural of staff is staffs.

Words near staff in the dictionary

  1. stadtholderships
  2. stadthouse
  3. stadthouses
  4. stafette
  5. stafettes
  6. staff
  7. staff angle
  8. staff angles
  9. staff captain
  10. staff captains
  11. staff college

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: staff (page history and authors); staff (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); staff (Urdu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); staff (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); staff (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); staff (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); staff (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); staff (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-staff.ogg.

Cite this entry: “staff.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/staff. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.