steep
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "steep", 5-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "steep" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "steep" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
steep is anEnglishadj. It means: Of a near-vertical gradient; of a slope, surface, curve, etc. that proceeds upward at an angle near vertical. Pronounced /stiːp/. It ranks #7,292 in English word frequency. Often confused with STP and stop.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | steep |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adj |
| IPA | /stiːp/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #7,292 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for steep is 5 letters long, classified as anadj, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /stiːp/. Corpus data places it at rank #7,292 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 4 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 7 documented wrong-spelling variants for steep, with forms such as "setep", "ssteep", and "steepp". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "STP", "stop", "stem", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English steep, from Old English stēap (“high”), from Proto-Germanic *staupaz, from Proto-Indo-European *(s)tewb- (“to push, stick”). Compare Old Frisian stāp ("high, towering"; > Modern Saterland Frisian stiep (“steep”)), Dutch stoop (“grand; pr… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is steep, spelled S-T-E-E-P, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Of a near-vertical gradient; of a slope, surface, curve, etc. that proceeds upward at an angle near vertical.
- 2Expensive.
- 3Difficult to access; not easy reached; lofty; elevated; high.
- 4resulting in a mast or windshield angle that strongly diverges from the perpendicular.
Etymology
From Middle English steep, from Old English stēap (“high”), from Proto-Germanic *staupaz, from Proto-Indo-European *(s)tewb- (“to push, stick”). Compare Old Frisian stāp ("high, towering"; > Modern Saterland Frisian stiep (“steep”)), Dutch stoop (“grand; proud”), Middle High German stouf (“towering cliff, precipice”), Middle High German stief (“steep”)). 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.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: setep,ssteep,steepp,step,stepe,stteep,tseep
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for steep
Misspelling Variants of "steep"
Frequency rank: #7,292 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: