Word.ws English Dictionary

staffage

staffage noun: the people and animals represented in a landscape painting.

Noun

staffage (usually uncountable, plural staffages)

  1. (usually, painting) The people and animals represented in a landscape painting.
    • Some tourists aggravate their position by hiring a guide. Every city of any historic importance breeds a class of mortals that are born guides; they have come to belong to the "staffage" of picturesque surroundings; and in this respect Prague is happily yet unspoilt.1923, Bernard Granville Baker, From a Terrace in Prague

Forms of staffage

pluralstaffages

Origin of staffage

Borrowed from German Staffage. By surface analysis, staff + -age.

Questions about staffage

What does staffage mean?
Staffage means the people and animals represented in a landscape painting.
What part of speech is staffage?
Staffage is a noun.
What is the plural of staffage?
The plural of staffage is staffages.

Words near staffage in the dictionary

  1. staff-sling
  2. staff-slings
  3. Staffa
  4. staffable
  5. staffaculty
  6. staffage
  7. staffages
  8. staffe
  9. staffed
  10. staffed up
  11. staffelite

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: staffage (page history and authors). 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.

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