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Glite Dictionary
short-staffed

short-staffed

7 3.9
There are too few workers to do the work well
  • adjective
  • /ˈʃɔrtˌstæft/
translation icon : falta de personal
  • Our team is currently short-staffed, making it difficult to meet all our deadlines.

It's one virtue of being perennially short staffed.

Examples

  • "To all citizens of Greene County, lock down your doors and stay alert as the men and women of the agency are short-staffed and will be for a while," the email, sent from Lt. Cox's account, read.

    Blog text (33)

  • At any given time, because of turnover, most facilities I questioned were short-staffed and were attempting to fill the gap with agency temporaries.

    Academic text (2002)

  • We are a bit short-staffed at the moment.

    Backyard Ashes (2013)

  • Do you know how short-staffed we are?

    Confessions of a Shopaholic (2009)

  • We're short-staffed today on top of everything else.

    Fiction book (1997)

  • The analyst said that this sometimes happens when state employment agencies are short-staffed.

    Blog text (34)

  • We're a small hospital and painfully short-staffed

    The I Inside (2004)

  • Agencies are short-staffed as it is; more thorough screening would only increase the shortage of available staff.

    Academic text (2007)

  • What happens if, as the Labor Dept. analyst suggested, some of your employment offices are short-staffed?

    Blog text (34)

  • When nurses vacate their positions, units are often left short-staffed, sometimes with less-skilled nurses in a given specialty area.

    Academic text (2015)

Synonyms

understaffed
vsshort-staffed
15 3.4

There are not enough workers to do the work needed

focuses on lacking workers needed for work to be done effectively
short-handed
vsshort-staffed
  • US
12 4.4

Not having enough people to do the job

refers to lacking workers required so work cannot be done effectively
undermanned
vsshort-staffed
3 5.6

There are not enough people to do the work properly

stresses lacking workers or assistants needed for effective work
understrength
vsshort-staffed
1 5.5

Does not have enough people or resources to work properly

applies specifically to lacking workers or assistants rather than other resources

How Staffed

overstaffed
1 4.1
short-staffed
7 3.9
unmanned
  • Specialized
39 5.1

Surface Forms

short-staffed positive

Morphology

short-staffed = short + staff (transparent) = short + staff + ed

The meaning follows directly from the compound 'short' + 'staff' with the adjectival '-ed' meaning 'having too few staff', which is straightforward for learners.

Etymology

The word short-staffed joins short ('not enough', as in 'short on cash') and staff ('workers' or 'team'), so it literally means a place with 'not enough workers' to do the job.