Chief of Staff

American  

noun

1. the senior officer of the U.S. Army or Air Force, a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, responsible to the secretary of a service branch.

2. (lowercase) the senior or principal staff officer in a brigade or division or higher unit in the U.S. Army or Marine Corps, in a numbered unit in the U.S. Air Force, or in a unit in the U.S. Navy commanded by a rear admiral or one of higher rank.

3. (lowercase) the senior officer in command of a general staff, especially that of the military forces of a nation.

4. (lowercase) the head of any staff.

   the chief of staff for the First Lady.

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Chief of Staff British  

noun

1. the senior staff officer under the commander of a major military formation or organization

2. the senior officer of each service of the armed forces

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Etymology

Origin of Chief of Staff

First recorded in 1880–85

Example Sentences

The remains of the Libyan chief of staff and his advisers, who were killed in a plane crash near Ankara, will be repatriated on Saturday, the Turkish defence ministry said.

From Barron's

Wiener’s opponents include Saikat Chakrabarti, a wealthy former software engineer who was Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff but hasn’t held elected office.

From The Wall Street Journal

Weiss reportedly gave “60 Minutes” producers White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller’s phone number.

From Salon

A former senior adviser for special projects and top policy aide at the White House, Mailman worked closely with deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller on the administration’s complex negotiations with higher-education institutions over federal funding.

From The Wall Street Journal

Will then lurches into a tut-tutting recapitulation of the French army chief of staff’s public statement that his nation’s people must accept the risk of losing their children to protect France from an unnamed aggressor.

From Salon