Staircase

How to spell staircase

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce staircase

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does staircase mean?

1. nounA set of stairs and the structure surrounding them, connecting different levels of a building.

Staircase in a sentence

• The grand staircase swept up to the first floor of the old hotel.

• Workers fitted a new carpet runner down the staircase over the weekend.

Where does staircase come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a compound of two older words, 'stair' and 'case'. The first part, 'stair', descends from the Old English stǣger, meaning a step or a thing that one climbs, and it is related to the verb 'to sty' or 'stigan', an old Germanic word meaning 'to climb or ascend'. The second part, 'case', comes through Old French from the Latin capsa, meaning 'a box or container', and here it carries the architectural sense of the framed enclosure or shaft that surrounds and holds the flight of steps. The pairing 'staircase' first appears in English in the early 1600s, originally describing the whole walled structure housing the stairs rather than the steps alone. Over time the word broadened to mean the steps themselves together with their supports and rail. The spelling is reassuringly transparent once you remember it is simply 'stair' joined to 'case', with no letters dropped where the two halves meet.

How the word is built

• stair (a step, from Old English stǣger)
• case (a frame or enclosure, from Latin capsa 'box')