stair

/stɛə//stɛɚ/

stair noun: a single step in a staircase.

Image: Manfred Heyde, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

stair (plural stairs)

A single step in a staircase.

Synonyms:

step
A series of steps; a staircase.
- Yesterday, upon the stair / I met a man who wasn’t there / He wasn’t there again today / I wish, I wish he’d go away …1899, Hughes Mearns, Antigonish
- Among other work done, according to the letter: CPR replaced the bottom of a deteriorating stair column base with hollow steel structural sections; conducted exploratory demolition on the underside of an eave that required “removal and reconstruction”; and removed all loose “cracked, spalled...2021 July 2, Eliott C. McLaughlin, Alta Spells, Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman, “Firm held off on repairs because of stability issues in months before Surfside building collapse”, in CNN, archived from...

Proper noun capitalized: Stair

Stair (plural Stairs)

A surname.

stair meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

stair in Hindi

stair, step of a staircase: सीढ़ी sīṛhī
stair, step: ज़ीना zīnā
stair or quay for drawing water: पनघट panghaṭ

stair in Marathi

stair, step of a staircase: पायरी pāyrī

stair in Urdu

stair, step of a staircase: سیڑھی sīṛhī
stair or quay for drawing water: پنگھٹ panghaṭ

More languagesFewer languages

stair in Bengali: সিঁড়ি śĩṛi
stair in Malayalam: പടി paṭi
stair in Kannada: ನಿಚ್ಚಣಿಗೆ, ಸೋಪಾನ, ಪಾವಟಿಗೆ, ಹಂತ
stair in Punjabi: پَوڑی pauṛī, پَوڑیاں pauṛeyāṉ
stair in Gujarati: દાદરો dādro
stair in Arabic: سَلَالِم salālim
stair in Malay: tangga
stair in Indonesian: tangga
stair in Persian: پله pelle, پلکان pellekân
stair in Thai: บันได ban-dai, กระได grà-dai
stair in Vietnamese: cầu thang
stair in Myanmar: လှေကား hleka:

Examples of stair in a sentence

She took up her post at the foot of the stairs.
I took a tumble down the stairs and broke my tooth.
My aunt can't manage the stairs any more, so she's moving to a bungalow.

All 40 example sentences with stair

Synonyms of stair

Forms of stair

Noun
plural	stairs
Proper noun
plural	Stairs

Plural of stair: stairs

Origin of stair

From Middle English steire, staire, stayre, stayer, steir, steyre, steyer, from Old English stǣġer (“stair, staircase”), from Proto-West Germanic *staigri, from Proto-Germanic *staigriz (“stairs, scaffolding”), from Proto-Indo-European *steygʰ- (“to walk, proceed, march, climb”). Cognate with Dutch steiger (“a stair, step, wharf, pier, scaffolding”), Middle Low German steiger, steir (“scaffolding”), German Low German Steiger (“a scaffold; trestle”). Related to Old English āstǣġan (“to ascend, go up, embark”), Old English stīġan (“to go, move, reach; ascend, mount, go up, spring up, rise; scale”), German Stiege (“a flight of stairs”). More at sty.

From stair, a topographic surname for someone who lived by a ladder or steps.

Words formed from stair

Phrases with stair

2 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with stair

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about stair

What does stair mean?: Stair means a single step in a staircase.
What is stair in Hindi?: Stair in Hindi is सीढ़ी (sīṛhī), ज़ीना (zīnā), पनघट (panghaṭ). See Stair meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is stair?: Stair can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce stair?: Stair is pronounced /stɛɚ/ (US).
What is the plural of stair?: The plural of stair is stairs.

Words near stair in the dictionary

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-stair.ogg, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-stare.wav.

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