Staff = employee

Dan Goncharoff thegonch at GMAIL.COM
Tue Nov 8 22:10:02 UTC 2011


I don't get your point. Do you think "staff" is an illegitimate word? I
have always distinguished between employees and staff. For example, I help
out a non-profit (is that in OED as a noun) with no employees, but plenty
of staff, all volunteers.
DanG


On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 5:02 PM, Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at ix.netcom.com>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at IX.NETCOM.COM>
> Subject:      Staff = employee
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I have fought many battles with Japanese clients who want to talk about =
> their "staffs" (employees) as "sutafu" is a common Japanese word. AFAIK, =
> I have always won, but it is a losing battle.
>
> Today, Jimmy Wales' Wiki statement has the following =
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:2011Appeal1):
>
> -----
> Google might have close to a million servers. Yahoo has something like =
> 13,000 staff. We have 400 servers and 73 staff.
> -----
>
> Benjamin Barrett
> Seattle, WA=
>
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