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staircase

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
See also: stair-case

English

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A spiral staircase.

Alternative forms

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Etymology

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Etymology tree
Proto-Indo-European *steygʰ-
Proto-Indo-European *-eti
Proto-Indo-European *stéygʰeti
Proto-Germanic *stīganą
Proto-Indo-European *-yeti
Proto-Indo-European *-éyeti
Proto-Germanic *-janą
Proto-Germanic *staigijaną
Proto-Indo-European *-rós
Proto-Germanic *-raz
Proto-Germanic *staigraz
Proto-Germanic *staigriz
Proto-West Germanic *staigri
Old English stǣġer
Middle English steire
English stair
English case
English staircase

    From stair + case.

    Pronunciation

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    • (General American) IPA(key): /ˈstɛɹˌkeɪs/
    • Audio (US):(file)
    • Hyphenation: stair‧case

    Noun

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    staircase (plural staircases)

    1. A flight of stairs; a stairway.
      • 2011, “13 Candles”, performed by Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats:
        I was on the staircase by the bell / Blinded by the black magician's spell
    2. A connected set of flights of stairs; a stairwell.
      • 1914 November, Louis Joseph Vance, “An Outsider […]”, in Munsey’s Magazine, volume LIII, number II, New York, N.Y.: The Frank A[ndrew] Munsey Company, […], published 1915, →OCLC, chapter III (Accessory After the Fact), page 382, column 1:
        Turning back, then, toward the basement staircase, she began to grope her way through blinding darkness, but had taken only a few uncertain steps when, of a sudden, she stopped short and for a little stood like a stricken thing, quite motionless save that she quaked to her very marrow in the grasp of a great and enervating fear.
      • 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 19, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:
        When Timothy and Julia hurried up the staircase to the bedroom floor, where a considerable commotion was taking place, Tim took Barry Leach with him. He had him gripped firmly by the arm, since he felt it was not safe to let him loose, and he had no immediate idea what to do with him.
      • 2023 November 13, Rosalind Jana, “Saltburn and the bizarre life of Britain's stately homes”, in BBC‎[1]:
        Oliver immediately gets a 'guided tour, Felix wheeling through libraries and endless colour-coded rooms, up and down staircases and along echoing halls where various "dead relly[s]" stare down from the walls.
    3. A set of locks (enclosed sections of waterway) mounted one above the next.

    Derived terms

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    Translations

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    Verb

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    staircase (third-person singular simple present staircases, present participle staircasing, simple past and past participle staircased)

    1. (transitive) To modify (a signal, a graph, etc.) to reduce a smooth curve to a series of discrete steps.
      • 2006, Nikos Paragios, Yunmei Chen, Olivier D. Faugeras, editors, Handbook of Mathematical Models in Computer Vision, Springer Science & Business Media, →ISBN, page 26:
        This leads to much smoother reconstructions in regions of moderate gradient and thus prevents staircasing.
    2. (real estate) To increase one's share in a co-ownership.
      • 2018, Dave Cowan, Helen Carr, Alison Wallace, Ownership, Narrative, Things, Springer, →ISBN, page 139:
        It is a good idea to make plans for staircasing when you first buy your shared ownership home.

    See also

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    Anagrams

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