Meaning & use
understaff
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Meaning
verbtransitivebusiness
To employ fewer workers than are needed to do a job well.
Grammar: Takes an object: they understaff the night shift.
Patterns
- understaff something
The hospital tends to understaff the weekend shift.
Restaurants that understaff their kitchens struggle during busy hours.
The company was criticized for deliberately understaffing its stores.
Word forms
| third person | understaffs |
|---|---|
| past tense | understaffed |
| past participle | understaffed |
| -ing form | understaffing |
Common combinations
- understaff a hospital
- Cuts forced them to understaff the hospital.
- chronically understaffed
- The school is chronically understaffed.
- understaff a shift
- Managers should never understaff a shift.
- deliberately understaff
- The firm was accused of deliberately understaffing.
- seriously understaffed
- The clinic is seriously understaffed.
Synonyms and how they differ
- shortstaff
- Shortstaff is an informal verb meaning the same thing but appears less often than understaff.
- skimp on staff
- Skimp on staff says the saving was deliberate and mean, while understaff may be accidental.
- cut staff
- Cut staff means to reduce the workforce, whereas understaff describes the result of too few people.
Opposites
Word family
- understaffed adjective
- lacking enough workers
- understaffing noun
- the problem of too few workers
- staff noun
- the people employed by an organization
- overstaff verb
- to employ more workers than needed
Commonly confused: understaff or overstaff?
understaff vs overstaff
Overstaff means to hire more workers than needed, the opposite of understaff.
Practice
Patients waited for hours because the clinic had chosen to ___ the evening shift.
Choose one answer.
Understaff means to have too few workers, which explains the delays. Overstaff would mean too many workers and shorter waits.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “understaff”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.