noun

• 1A vertical wooden post or plank in a building or other structure.

  ‘It's like a workshop in Hades - you feel the heat from barrels set over open fires in the floor and hear the piercing din of hammers on steel as hoops are pounded onto staves.’

  More example sentences

  • ‘Cutting staves led to the purchase of a kiln, which, in turn, opened up additional markets.’
  • ‘Here there were no men training, only a few targets and a pile of wooden staves in the corner.’
  • ‘Newhaus spent IR £35,000 on just elevating the site. He then had to install staves to reinforce the foundations further.’
  • ‘One corner of the room contains tall curving birch staves that are evocative of a forest.’
  • ‘By looking at the end grain, it was often possible to determine whether the darts were made from natural shafts or split from larger pieces of wood in the form of staves.’

  Synonyms

  post, pole, stick, spike, upright, support, prop, strut, stave, pale, paling, picket, pile, piling, stanchion, shaft, cane, beanpole, rod, mast

  1. 1.1Any of the lengths of wood attached side by side to make a barrel, bucket, or other container.
     ‘Experiments with brandy as well as wine, however, demonstrate the superiority of air-dried over kiln-dried wood for barrel staves.’
     More example sentences

     • ‘To illustrate this, Liebig imagined a barrel crafted out of staves of mismatched lengths.’
     • ‘The wood of the stave and arrow shafts was dark with moisture.’
     • ‘The adventures that he and his friends shared on the Red River in a homemade canoe made of barrel staves and grain sacks became a favorite memory.’
     • ‘Wilcox's experience as a logger developed into another niche market: cutting staves for a barrel maker.’
     • ‘The sun louvers were made of salvaged barrel staves from a nearby pickle factory.’
     • ‘They entered the market obliquely through the production of non-agricultural products such as barrel staves that they bartered for textiles, hardware and cheap consumer goods.’
     • ‘Richard worked just about every job in that business, from harvesting logs to make the barrel staves through to coopering and trucking the water-tight barrels to fishery clients in Atlantic Canada.’
     • ‘Close by was apparently another barrel which had collapsed as only the staves - still well preserved - remained.’
     • ‘For three years the wine is aged in new barrels made of hand-split oak staves.’
     • ‘It was carried out with a stocking filled with sand or sometimes wooden staves from a cask.’
  2. 1.2A strong wooden stick or iron pole used as a weapon.
     ‘In the center lie a pile of wooden swords, staves, daggers, shields.’
     More example sentences

     • ‘Every character has swords, staves or other edged weaponry, which you can perform light spin attacks or strong power strikes on opponents.’
     • ‘The two guards were confronted by four men in balaclavas, armed with a small samurai sword and wooden staves.’
     • ‘Gabe stalked over to the weapons rack and pulled down two wooden staves, in a bad temper because his preferred sword hadn't been chosen.’
     • ‘Vigilante groups dressed in robes and turbans, armed with staves and swords and mounted on motorbikes, patrol the city to enforce the curfew.’
     • ‘He could make out the glint of staves and unsheathed swords through the swirling dust.’
     • ‘Anyone who remembered the plastic visors, the guns and staves of police guarding the Justice Department during Vietnam protests had to be struck with the civility of it all.’
     • ‘The recital of her crime too was read out as she knelt, and then the executioner stepped forward with a wooden stave and dealt a hundred blows upon her shoulder.’
     • ‘Len Smith was attacked just seconds after reaching his 46th birthday and was beaten savagely with a wooden stave picked up in the beer garden of his pub in Salford.’
     • ‘As he searched, he spotted a wooden stave laying in the dirt.’
     • ‘On the roadway, the supporters were shouting at the crowd to move back, staves were being swung, a few punches thrown.’
     • ‘They responded by putting down their staves and harpoons.’
     • ‘They fought the riot police with staves and stones.’
     • ‘I started to crash to the stones of the courtyard, only to find myself being supported by Gareth, who had immediately dropped his stave to catch me.’
     • ‘Gold-covered wooden staves were used to carry The Ark Of The Covenant.’
     • ‘The same leaders of more than 50 men who beat Peter Cavanaugh to death with wooden staves forbade anyone other than close relatives from attending the burial.’
     • ‘Arms and wooden staves waved in crazy confusion above the human mass and from it projectiles - bricks, rocks, bars of iron - arced into the line of men.’
     • ‘The end of the room was guarded by two women in long white-gold robes, standing to attention, their ornately carved staves upright.’
     • ‘He used his stave like a walking cane, swinging it before him with a tap of his boot.’
     • ‘Jonathan trained his crossbow on the back door while Kyli and Ben stood on either side of the door with their staves raised.’

• 2British Music
  

  another term for staff (sense 4 of the noun)

  ‘A typical graph contains one or more grand staves, or piano staves, so one will likely begin with a piano template.’

  More example sentences

  • ‘In his Alphabet des mouvements du corps humain he placed movement symbols on a special stave while recording the floor patterns above it.’

• 3A verse or stanza of a poem.

  Synonyms

  stanza, strophe, stave, canto