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35,981 English word records · 45,491 etymology sections in this online subset

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2 source sections across 1 headword matching “Staff”. These are separate from the reviewed results below.

Open the permanent entry for staff →
staffEnglish (en) · Etymology 1Source text

From Middle English staf, from Old English stæf (“letter of the alphabet”), from Proto-West Germanic *stab, from Proto-Germanic *stabaz. Cognate with Dutch staf, German Stab, Danish stav, Swedish stav. Sense of "group of military officers that assists a commander" and similar meanings, attested from 1702, is influenced by or is even from German Stab.

Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗
staffEnglish (en) · Etymology 1Source text

From Middle English staf, from Old English stæf (“letter of the alphabet”), from Proto-West Germanic *stab, from Proto-Germanic *stabaz. Cognate with Dutch staf, German Stab, Danish stav, Swedish stav. Sense of "group of military officers that assists a commander" and similar meanings, attested from 1702, is influenced by or is even from German Stab.

Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗

From Wiktionary contributors; extracted by Tatu Ylonen / Wiktextract / Kaikki.org. Extraction source · CC-BY-SA-4.0. Selected source text is reformatted for display; language and section identity are retained.

Source dump: 2026-10-01 · Extraction: 2026-10-30. These dates identify a dump snapshot, not an individual page revision.

Snapshot checksums and coverage
SOURCE SHA-256
5ff2c072f8099f2d2ce484bd6957bf179f046d2ad37bc36555edf8bb84cb5291
CORPUS SHA-256
c4c2a77325141846709230e11c2959332acd630d53e52905b72d36211251b081
IMPORT RUN
73216b9a9b78ed3830994bf853103716f5a4dc57099e371e9f8fdc468facca26
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Chambers (1908)

1908
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