Meaning & use
skeleton staff
Last updated
Meaning
nounsingular
The smallest number of workers needed to keep a business, office or service running, such as during a holiday or emergency.
Grammar: Takes an or the: a skeleton staff was on duty.
Patterns
- a skeleton staff of number
- run on a skeleton staff
- operate with a skeleton staff
Only a skeleton staff worked on Christmas Day.
The office ran on a skeleton staff during the storm.
The factory kept a skeleton staff during the shutdown.
Common combinations
- a skeleton staff
- A skeleton staff stayed to answer the phones.
- run on a skeleton staff
- The restaurant runs on a skeleton staff in winter.
- operate with a skeleton staff
- The airport operated with a skeleton staff overnight.
- keep a skeleton staff
- Management kept a skeleton staff during the closure.
- reduced to a skeleton staff
- After layoffs, the newsroom was reduced to a skeleton staff.
Synonyms and how they differ
- minimal staff
- Is a plain description of few employees, while skeleton staff stresses the bare minimum to keep going.
- bare-bones crew
- More informal, and often used for teams in the field.
- core team
- Describes the key members, not the reduced numbers in a quiet period.
Opposites
Word family
- skeleton noun
- the framework of bones
- staff noun
- the people employed by an organization
- staff verb
- to provide with workers
- understaffed adjective
- having too few workers
Commonly confused: skeleton staff or skeleton crew?
skeleton staff vs skeleton crew
A skeleton crew is much the same thing, but crew is used for ships, planes and similar work groups, while staff is used for offices and services.
Practice
During the holiday week, the clinic operated with a ___ to handle only emergencies.
Choose one answer.
A skeleton staff is the smallest team needed to keep a service going. A staff meeting is a gathering, not a reduced team.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “skeleton staff”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.