stair
UK /stɛə/ · US /stɛɚ/ noun, proper noun
Forms stairs
Synonyms
Etymology
From Middle English steire, staire, stayre, stayer, steir, steyre, steyer, from Old English stǣġer (“stair, staircase”), from Proto-West Germanic *staigri, from Proto-Germanic *staigriz (“stairs, scaffolding”), from Proto-Indo-European *steygʰ- (“to walk, proceed, march, climb”).
Cognate with Dutch steiger (“a stair, step, wharf, pier, scaffolding”), Middle Low German steiger, steir (“scaffolding”), German Low German Steiger (“a scaffold; trestle”). Related to Old English āstǣġan (“to ascend, go up, embark”), Old English stīġan (“to go, move, reach; ascend, mount, go up, spring up, rise; scale”), German Stiege (“a flight of stairs”). More at sty.
From stair, a topographic surname for someone who lived by a ladder or steps.
Webster’s 1913
- noun One step of a series for ascending or descending to a different level; --commonly applied to those within a building.
- noun A series of steps, as for passing from one story of a house to another; --commonly used in the plural; but originally used in the singular only. "I a winding stair found." Chaucer's Dream. Below stairs, in the basement or lower part of a house, where the servants are. -- Flight of stairs, the stairs which make the whole ascent of a story.
Etymology [OE. steir, steyer, AS. st, from to ascend, rise. sq. root164. See Sty to ascend.]
Sources: Wiktionary · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “stair”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details