Word.ws English Dictionary

missing stair

missing stair noun: a member of a community who is widely but privately known within that community for abusiveness or other harmful behavior that has not been addressed.

Noun

missing stair (plural missing stairs)

  1. (idiomatic, neologism) A member of a community who is widely but privately known within that community for abusiveness or other harmful behavior that has not been addressed.
    • "Oh yeah, I almost forgot to tell you, there's a missing step on the unlit staircase with no railings. But it's okay because we all just remember to jump over it." Some people are like that missing stair.2012 June 22, Cliff Pervocracy, “The missing stair.”, in The Pervocracy (blog), retrieved 21 Sep 2018
    • Many groups, whether they may be families, workplaces, organizations, or groups of friends will have what is sometimes called a “missing stair.”2015, Julie Still, Managing Your Brand: Career Management and Personal PR for Librarians

Forms of missing stair

pluralmissing stairs

Origin of missing stair

Coined by blogger Cliff Pervocracy (a pseudonym) in 2012. In analogy to a stairway missing a step, with guests expected to overcome or bypass the obstacle rather than it being fixed.

Questions about missing stair

What does missing stair mean?
Missing stair means a member of a community who is widely but privately known within that community for abusiveness or other harmful behavior that has not been addressed.
What part of speech is missing stair?
Missing stair is a noun.
What is the plural of missing stair?
The plural of missing stair is missing stairs.

Words near missing stair in the dictionary

  1. missing people
  2. missing person
  3. missing persons
  4. missing piece
  5. missing someone's point
  6. missing stair
  7. missing stairs
  8. missing stays
  9. missing the boat
  10. missing the bus
  11. missing the forest for the trees

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: missing stair (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-missing stair.ogg.

Cite this entry: “missing stair.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/missing_stair. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.