staff

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A stick or cane carried as an aid in walking or climbing.
2. n. A stout stick used as a weapon; a cudgel.
3. n. A pole on which a flag is displayed; a flagstaff.
4. n. A rod or baton carried as a symbol of authority.
5. n. A rule or similar graduated stick used for testing or measuring, as in surveying.
6. n. A group of assistants to a manager, executive, or other person in authority.
7. n. A group of military officers assigned to assist a commanding officer in an executive or advisory capacity.
8. n. The personnel who carry out a specific enterprise: the nursing staff of a hospital.
9. n. Something that serves as a staple or support.
10. n. Music A set of horizontal lines and intermediate spaces used in notation to represent a sequence of pitches, in modern notation normally consisting of five lines and four spaces. Also called stave.
11. v. To provide with a staff of workers or assistants.
12. v. To serve on the staff of.
13. n. A building material of plaster and fiber used as an exterior wall covering of temporary buildings, as at expositions.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A stick or pole. Specifically— A stick used as a walking-stick, especially one five or six feet long used as a support in walking or climbing.
2. n. A stick used as a weapon, as that used at quarter-staff; a club; a cudgel.
3. n. A stick used as an ensign of authority; a baton or scepter. Compare baton, club, mace.
4. n. A post fixed in the ground; a stake.
5. n. A pole on which to hoist and display a flag: as, a flagstaff; an ensign-staff; a jack-staff.
6. n. The pole of a vehicle; a carriage-pole.
7. n. The long handle of certain weapons, as a spear, a halberd, or a poleax.
8. n. A straight-edge for testing or truing a line or surface: as, the proof-staff used in testing the face of the stone in a grind-mill.
9. n. In surveying, a graduated stick, used in leveling. See cross-staff, Jacob's-staff, and cut under leveling-staff.
10. n. One of several instruments formerly used in taking the sun's altitude at sea: as, the fore-staff. back-staff, cross-staff. See these words.
11. n. In ship-building, a measuring and spacing rule.
12. n. The stilt of a plow.
13. n. In surgery, a grooved steel instrument having a curvature, used to guide the knife or gorget through the urethra into the bladder in the operation of lithotomy.
14. n. In architecture, same as rudenture.
15. n. Something which upholds or supports; a support; a prop.
16. n. A round of a ladder.
17. n. A body of assistants or executive officers. Milit., a body of officers who are not in command of troops, but who act as the assistants of an officer in high command, sometimes including that officer himself. Thus, the regimental staff consists of the colonel, lieutenantcolonel, major, and adjutant, or the officers corresponding to these ranks; the brigade staff and division staff are composed of aides-de-camp, commissaries, quartermasters, and the like; and the staff of a general commanding an army-corps, or an army composed of several army-corps, includes these last-named officers and also a chief of staff, a chief of artillery, a chief engineer, and the like. The general staff is a body of officers forming the central office of the army of a nation, and it acts, in a sense, as the personal staff of the commander-in-chief, or of the king or other chief ruler. In the United States navy, staff-officers are the non-combatants, comprising the medical corps, the pay-corps, the steam engineering corps, and chaplains, of those who go to sea, as well as civil engineers, naval constructors, and professors of mathematics.
18. n. A letter of the alphabet. See etymology of book.
19. n. A line; a verse; also, a stanza.
20. n. In musical notation, a set of five horizontal lines on which notes are placed so as to indicate the pitch of intended tones. Both the lines and the spaces between them are significant, and are called degrees: they are numbered from below upward. When the nine degrees of the staff are not sufficient for the notation of a melody or chord, it is extended by means of added or leger lines above or below. In general, the successive degrees of the staff are understood to correspond to the successive degrees of the scale or to the successive white keys of the keyboard, irrespective of the fact that the intervals thus indicated are not equal to each other. An absolute pitch for the staff-degrees is indicated by a clef placed at the beginning. (See clef.) Gregorian music is customarily written on a staff of four lines, and the only clef used is the C clef. The staff with its appropriate notation is a development from the early medieval neumes, which were originally dots, dashes, or compound marks, whose relative position or shape indicated the relative pitch of successive tones. To make this notation more precise a horizontal line was drawn across the page to mark the pitch of some given tone, as C or F and the neumes were arranged above or below this line. Later, a second line was added, and then others, only the lines being at flrst regarded as signiflcant. What was called the great or grand staff was such a staff of eleven lines. In harmonic or concerted music, two or more staffs are used together, and are connected by a brace. See brace, 5, and score, 9. Also stave, especially in Great Britain.
21. n. In heraldry, same as fissure,5.
22. n. Plaster of Paris mixed, in water, with some cement, glycerin, and dextrine: used as a building material. It was first employed at the Paris Exposition of 1878, and was extensively used in the construction of the buildings of the Chicago Exposition in 1893.
23. n. In building, plastering in portable sheets or slabs, prepared for nailing on a frame. It is made by mixing the mortar with a durable fibrous material, as shavings, hemp, and the like. First employed at the Paris Exposition of 1878.

Wiktionary

1. n. a long, straight stick, especially one used to assist in walking.
2. n. music A series of horizontal lines on which musical notes are written.
3. n. The employees of a business.
4. n. uncountable A mixture of plaster and fibre used as a temporary exterior wall covering (see Wikipedia article)
5. v. transitive to supply (a business) with employees

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A long piece of wood; a stick; the long handle of an instrument or weapon; a pole or stick, used for many purposes
2. n. A stick carried in the hand for support or defense by a person walking; hence, a support; that which props or upholds.
3. n. A pole, stick, or wand borne as an ensign of authority; a badge of office.
4. n. A pole upon which a flag is supported and displayed.
5. n. rare The round of a ladder.
6. n. A series of verses so disposed that, when it is concluded, the same order begins again; a stanza; a stave.
7. n. (Mus.) The five lines and the spaces on which music is written; -- formerly called stave.
8. n. (Mech.) An arbor, as of a wheel or a pinion of a watch.
9. n. (Surg.) The grooved director for the gorget, or knife, used in cutting for stone in the bladder.
10. n. (Mil.) 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. See État Major.
11. n. Hence: A body of assistants serving to carry into effect the plans of a superintendent or manager; sometimes used for the entire group of employees of an enterprise, excluding the top management.
12. n. (Arch.) Plaster combined with fibrous and other materials so as to be suitable for sculpture in relief or in the round, or for forming flat plates or boards of considerable size which can be nailed to framework to make the exterior of a larger structure, forming joints which may afterward be repaired and concealed with fresh plaster.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. the body of teachers and administrators at a school
2. n. a strong rod or stick with a specialized utilitarian purpose
3. n. a rod carried as a symbol
4. v. serve on the staff of
5. n. personnel who assist their superior in carrying out an assigned task
6. v. provide with staff
7. n. (music) the system of five horizontal lines on which the musical notes are written
8. n. building material consisting of plaster and hair; used to cover external surfaces of temporary structure (as at an exposition) or for decoration