skeleton crew
A crew consisting of the minimum number of personnel needed to maintain and operate the basic functions of something, such as a business, a factory, or a ship.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
“The hotel runs with a skeleton crew during the quiet winter months.”
“A skeleton crew manages the store while the rest of us attend the meeting.”
“Because of the holiday, the office is operating with a skeleton crew until next week.”
“The hospital kept a skeleton crew in the billing department over the weekend so they could focus all their resources on the emergency room.”
“The factory maintained only a skeleton crew throughout the strike to ensure that the essential machinery remained operational and safe.”
From the 18th-century military sense of a skeleton as a regiment reduced to a very small number of soldiers, far short of its established strength. The term evolved into an attributive use denoting the bare essentials or the absolute minimum required for operation. Metaphorically, a skeleton crew is one that has been stripped of its substance until it consists of the bare bones rather than an adequately fleshed-out body of personnel.
Last updated August 10, 2026