Is “staves” the plural of “staff”? (And, by the way, I am talking about the music notation term, not a group of employees).
In the Straight Dope Staff Report they seem to be interchangeable:
“Staffs once had as few as four lines and as many as six. Standardization of staves at five lines began in the 16th century.”
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mmusicnotes.html
I have some staff paper that says on the bottom “12 stave” on the bottom, suggesting the singular is “stave”.
Are “stave” and “staff” actually two different things?
Jabba
May 21, 2003, 10:26pm
2
Chambers Dictionary gives both ‘staffs’ and ‘staves’ as correct plurals of ‘staff’ and ‘stave’ as an alternative for ‘staff’ in a musical context.
“Stave” is a slightly arcane word for “staff”, and they can both be used in the singular and plural.
In my experience, though, real-life musical usage tends toward staff-staves .
12-stave manuscript paper being an oddity, of course.
Sorry shoulf of been clearer in Music you can have “a stave” and “staves” but you can also use the word stave in excatly the same way you would use the word staff when describing a wooden stick.
I checked the OED. It says staffs is plural for all meanings except musical staff and barrel staff, which are both usually staves.
Staff staves dwarf dwarves elf elves. Some like to say elfs dwarfs and staffs but it sounds terrible to me.
But can you staff off a stave infection?
Not at all. It’s commonly used in classic orchestral music, like symphonies.
I meant the usage of the word stave .
Grammatically, it should probably be 12-staff manuscript paper.
:rolleyes: