Word.ws English Dictionary

step lively

step lively verb: to move quickly; to hurry along.

Verb

step lively (third-person singular simple present steps lively, present participle stepping lively, simple past and past participle stepped lively)

  1. (US, dated, idiomatic, imperative, usually) To move quickly; to hurry along.
    • Our London correspondent informs us that the "spirit of rush" possesses London. The motor omnibuses reach a speed rate of four miles an hour. The guards on the underground railway are beginning to exclaim "Step lively!" Old-fashioned, conservative Britons are indignant.1907 August 1, “The Sprit of Rush”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 30 Jan 2023
    • "Step lively, please," said a jiffy who was sitting on the adjoining post. "Father Time permits no delays, you know; come, step lively!"1908, Percy Keese Fitzhugh, King Time: Or The Mystical Land of the Hours, a Fantasy, New York and Boston: H.M. Caldwell Company, page 197

Forms of step lively

third-person singular presentsteps lively
present participlestepping lively
past participlestepped lively
paststepped lively

Questions about step lively

What does step lively mean?
Step lively means to move quickly; to hurry along.
What part of speech is step lively?
Step lively is a verb.
What is the past tense of step lively?
The past tense of step lively is stepped lively.

Words near step lively in the dictionary

  1. step into someone's shoes
  2. step into the breach
  3. step it
  4. step ladder
  5. step ladders
  6. step lively
  7. step machine
  8. step machines
  9. step motor
  10. step motors
  11. step off

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: step lively (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.

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