Steep

How to spell steep

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce steep

What does steep mean?

1. adjectiveRising or falling sharply, at a near-vertical angle.
2. verbTo soak food or other material in liquid to soften it or draw out flavour.
3. adjectiveUnreasonably high in price or amount.

Steep in a sentence

• adjective

  The path up the hill was so steep that we had to stop and rest.

• verb

  Let the tea bags steep for four minutes before pouring.

• adjective

  The hotel charged a steep rate for a single night's stay.

• adjective

  The driver shifted into low gear before the steep descent.

• verb

  You should steep the dried beans overnight in cold water.

• adjective

  Forty pounds for parking seemed rather steep to the visitors.

Where does steep come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The slope sense of steep traces back to the Old English steap, which meant 'high', 'lofty', or 'projecting upward', a word shared with several other Germanic tongues. Over the centuries that sense of towering height narrowed into the modern idea of a sharp, near-vertical incline, and from the steepness of a climb the word later stretched figuratively to describe a price that feels uncomfortably high. The verb meaning 'to soak in liquid' has a separate but tangled history; it appears in Middle English as stepen, probably from a Scandinavian source related to the Old Norse word for a vat or steeping tub, and is connected to the same family as words for liquid and pouring. Because two distinct old words collapsed into the single modern spelling, English now uses the same four letters for a hillside, a cup of tea, and an eye-watering bill. The spelling itself is mercifully regular, with the long 'ee' doing exactly what a reader expects, so it rarely trips up adult writers.

How the word is built

• steep (whole word from Old English steap: high, lofty); no affixes