Staffed

How to spell staffed

7 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce staffed

What does staffed mean?

1. verbProvided an organisation or place with the people needed to operate it.

Staffed in a sentence

• The new clinic was fully staffed by the end of the month.

• The helpline is staffed around the clock by trained volunteers.

Where does staffed come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The verb staff grew out of the noun staff, which comes from the Old English stæf, originally meaning a walking stick or rod. Over centuries that physical sense broadened figuratively: a staff was something you leaned on for support, and by the 1700s a body of officers who supported a commander came to be called a staff, with the workforce sense following soon after. The verb meaning 'to provide with workers' is comparatively young, emerging in the nineteenth century, and staffed is simply its regular past form. The doubled f is inherited straight from the Old English spelling and is the only real trap here, since the single -ed ending is entirely predictable. The same humble stæf still survives in 'staves' and in the musical 'stave'.

How the word is built

• staff (a body of workers, from Old English stæf)
• -ed (past tense/participle suffix)