staff

noun staffs · staves · staff

1. countable, uncountable 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.
2. countable, uncountable A series of horizontal lines on which musical notes are written; a stave.
3. countable, uncountable People employed by a business or other organisation. The company employed 10 new members of staff this month.
4. uncountable A mixture of plaster and fibre used as a temporary exterior wall covering.

   Similar: personnel

5. countable, uncountable A pole, stick, or wand borne as an ensign of authority; a badge of office. a constable's staff
6. countable, uncountable A pole upon which a flag is supported and displayed.
7. archaic, countable, uncountable The rung of a ladder. I ascend at one [ladder] of six hundred and thirty-nine staves.
8. countable, uncountable 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:
9. countable, uncountable An arbor, as of a wheel or a pinion of a watch.
10. countable, uncountable The grooved director for the gorget, or knife, used in cutting for stone in the bladder.
11. countable, uncountable 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.
12. archaic, countable, uncountable 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 The train-staff and ticket system was used widely at one time, until superseded by electrical token systems, the first of which, the tablet system, appeared in 1878, […].

Similar: stick, stave

verb staffs · staffing · 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.

noun

1. misspelling Misspelling of staph