umbrella step

English

Etymology

From the image of twirling an umbrella.

Noun

umbrella step (plural umbrella steps)

1. A type of move in the children's game Giant Steps or Mother May I that involves twirling on one foot while holding one finger on the top of the head.
   • 1971, Eleanor Burke Leacock, The Culture of poverty: a critique, page 104:

     As the various players are made to laugh and are eliminated in "Statue," it is noticed that one of the last to go is frozen in the position of umbrella step from the game of "Giant Step."

   • 1988, Michael Jay Katz, Pattern biology and the complex architectures of life, page 159:

     It was all determined; the steps were measured, and the way was fated. At each rank, the innumerable possibilities— two bunny steps and three baby steps, one scissors step, three giant steps and one umbrella step, a baby step and a scissor step...— these many possible roads were sorted, blocked, organized, and channelled, and only one of the potential itineraries was actually played out

   • 2004, Bradford D. Martin -, The theater is in the street, →ISBN:

     These instructions played on the "Don't Walk" traffic signal by imploring pedestrians to adopt alternative forms of mobility such as the "umbrella step, stroll, cake walk, sombersault, finger-crawl, squat-jump, pilgrimmage, Phylly dog, etc.)."

   • 2017, Mary-Lou Weisman, Playing House in Provence: How Two Americans Became a Little Bit French, →ISBN:

     When we're at home, he handles my bossiness with remarkable compliance. I tell him what he should do, and he does it, unless he doesn't want to. In Provence, however, he finds me overbearing, no doubt due to an excess of togetherness. He experiences me as conducting a nonstop game of “Mother May I,” demanding his obedience to the childish equivalent of giant steps, baby steps, backward steps, and umbrella steps. (Umbrella steps, as you may recall, involve twirling.)