steep

• enPR: stēp, IPA^(key): /stiːp/
• Rhymes: -iːp

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From Middle English steep, from Old English stēap (“high”), from Proto-Germanic *staupaz. Compare Old Frisian stāp, Dutch stoop (“grand; proud”), Middle High German stouf (“towering cliff, precipice”), Middle High German stief (“steep”)), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)tewb- (“to push, stick”).[1] The Proto-Indo-European root (and related) has many and varied descendants, including English stub; compare also Scots stap (“to strike, to forcibly insert”).

The sense of “sharp slope” is attested circa 1200; the sense “expensive” is attested US 1856.[1]

steep (comparative steeper, superlative steepest)

1. Of a near-vertical gradient; of a slope, surface, curve, etc. that proceeds upward at an angle near vertical.

   a steep hill or mountain; a steep roof; a steep ascent; a steep barometric gradient

2. (informal) expensive

   Twenty quid for a shave? That's a bit steep.

3. (obsolete) Difficult to access; not easy reached; lofty; elevated; high.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Chapman to this entry?)

   

   A car windshield like this is said to have a steep rake.

4. (of the rake of a ship's mast, or a car's windshield) resulting in a mast or windshield angle that strongly diverges from the perpendicular

   The steep rake of the windshield enhances the fast lines of the exterior.

• steepen

• (dialectal) brant

steep (plural steeps)

1. The steep side of a mountain etc.; a slope or acclivity.
   • Benjamin Disraeli

     It ended precipitously in a dark and narrow ravine, formed on the other side by an opposite mountain, the lofty steep of which was crested by a city gently rising on a gradual slope.

From Middle English stepen, from Old Norse steypa (“to make stoop, cast down, pour out, cast (metal)”)[2][3], from Proto-Germanic *staupijaną (“to tumble, make tumble, plunge”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)tewb- (“to push, hit”). Cognate with Danish støbe (“cast (metal)”), Norwegian støpe, støype, Swedish stöpa (“to found, cast (metal)”), Old English stūpian (“to stoop, bend the back, slope”). More at stoop.

steep (third-person singular simple present steeps, present participle steeping, simple past and past participle steeped)

1. (transitive, intransitive) To soak an item (or to be soaked) in liquid in order to gradually add or remove components to or from the item

   They steep skins in a tanning solution to create leather.

   The tea is steeping.

   • Wordsworth

     In refreshing dew to steep / The little, trembling flowers.

2. (intransitive) To imbue with something.
   • Earle

     The learned of the nation were steeped in Latin.

   a town steeped in history

• insteep

steep (countable and uncountable, plural steeps)

1. A liquid used in a steeping process

   Corn steep has many industrial uses.

2. A rennet bag.

• Estep, Tepes, speet, teeps, tepes