step
noun · verb
Simple meaning
An advance or movement made from one foot to the other.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
stehpIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈstɛp
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
An advance or movement made from one foot to the other; a pace.
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.
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.
The space passed over by one movement of the foot in walking or running.
A running board where passengers step to get on and off the bus.
A short distance
verb
intransitive
To move the foot in walking; to advance or recede by raising and moving one of the feet to another resting place, or by moving both feet in succession.
intransitive
To walk slowly, gravely, or resolutely.
intransitive
To walk; to go on foot; especially, to walk a little distance.
To dance.
transitive
To set, as the foot.
intransitivefiguratively
To move mentally; to go in imagination.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A1 · Beginner
- Frequency
- Very Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: An advance or movement made from one foot to the other; a pace.
Used this way, step is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Nearby words
- dance step , rarer, so it draws attention
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use step
- “He paused on the bottom step.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
A flight of stairs or a flight of steps.
A professional dancer.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
The act of increasing something.
A transformer that increases voltage.
A headline with the top line flush left and succeeding lines indented to the right.
A formal resignation and renunciation of powers.
A motor (especially an electric motor) that moves or rotates in small discrete steps.
A stone in a marsh or shallow water that can be stepped on in crossing.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.