Dictionaries › English

step

Pronunciation: /stɛp/

The English word “step” has 20 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. An advance or movement made from one foot to the other; a pace.
  2. A rest, or one of a set of rests, for the foot in ascending or descending, as a stair, or a rung of a ladder.
  3. The part of a spade, digging stick or similar tool that a digger's foot rests against and presses on when digging; an ear, a foot-rest.
  4. The button joining a glass's stem to its foot.
  5. A distinct part of a process; stage; phase.
  6. A running board where passengers step to get on and off the bus.
  7. The space passed over by one movement of the foot in walking or running.
  8. A small space or distance.
  9. A print of the foot; a footstep; a footprint; track.
  10. A gait; manner of walking.
  11. Proceeding; measure; action; act.
  12. A walk; passage.
  13. A portable framework of stairs, much used indoors in reaching to a high position.
  14. A framing in wood or iron which is intended to receive an upright shaft; specifically, a block of wood, or a solid platform upon the keelson, supporting the heel of the mast.
  15. One of a series of offsets, or parts, resembling the steps of stairs, as one of the series of parts of a cone pulley on which the belt runs.
  16. A bearing in which the lower extremity of a spindle or a vertical shaft revolves.
  17. The interval between two contiguous degrees of the scale.
  18. A change of position effected by a motion of translation.
  19. A constant difference between consecutive values in a series.
  20. Kick scooter.

Etymology

From Middle English steppen, from Old English steppan (“to step, go, proceed, advance”), stepe (“step”), from Proto-West Germanic *stappjan, from Proto-Germanic *stapjaną (“to step”), *stapiz (“step”), from Proto-Indo-European *stebʰ- (“to support, stomp, curse, be amazed”). Cognate with West Frisian stappe (“to step”), North Frisian stape (“to walk, trudge”), Dutch stappen (“to step, walk”),…

Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “step” there

More English words

About this dictionary

The English dictionary on Glottosphere has 650,529 entries with a page. Browse the English dictionary.

Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.