Staffing

How to spell staffing

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce staffing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does staffing mean?

1. nounThe act of providing an organisation with the workers it needs, or the number and arrangement of those workers.

Staffing in a sentence

• The hospital warned that staffing levels were dangerously low over the weekend.

• The agency handles staffing for several warehouses during the busy season.

Where does staffing come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from 'staff', an ancient Germanic word that comes from the Old English 'stæf', which literally meant a walking stick, rod, or pole. Over centuries the sense broadened figuratively: a staff supported a person, so a 'staff' came to mean a group of people who support and serve an organisation, a usage that took hold in English by the early 1800s, partly influenced by the German 'Stab' used for a body of military officers. From that noun English built the verb 'to staff', meaning to supply with workers, and the gerund 'staffing' names the activity of providing and arranging employees. Because the base word ends in a double 'f', that pair carries straight through into the spelling, and the suffix simply adds '-ing' with no further doubling, which is the small point a writer has to keep steady.

How the word is built

• staff (a body of employees)
• -ing (noun-forming suffix denoting an activity)