# riot stairs

> English word · Noun

## Definitions
1. A flight of stairs that is constructed to deliberately disrupt the natural strides of people walking or running on them.

## Etymology
Coined for the construction of such stairways on university campuses in response to student unrest during the 1960s and 1970s in an effort to prevent mobs of students from running together.

## Source
Compiled from Wiktionary via kaikki.org (CC BY-SA). Data vintage: 2026-05-06.
Canonical page: https://plainspell.com/en/word/riot-stairs