step-

From Middle English step-, from Old English stēop- (“deprived of a relative, step-”, prefix), from Proto-West Germanic *steupa-, from Proto-Germanic *steupa- (“orphaned, step-”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)tewp- (“to push, strike”).

Cognate with Scots step- (“step-”), West Frisian stiep- (“step-”), Dutch stief- (“step-”), Low German steef- (“step-”), German stief- (“step-”), Swedish styv- (“step-”), Icelandic stjúp- (“step-”). Related to Old English stīepan (“to deprive, bereave”). Not, however, related to the familiar English noun or verb step.

step-

1. A prefix used before father, mother, brother, sister, son, daughter, child, and so forth, to indicate that the person being identified is not a blood relative but is related through the marriage of a parent.

The use of this term is usually limited to people who live in, or have lived in, the same household. Someone whose parent remarried after they (the child) had already grown up and left the parent’s home would be less likely to regard the new spouse’s children as stepsiblings.

• “step-”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

• EPTs, ESTP, PETs, Pest, Sept, Sept., TPEs, Teps, pest, pets, sept, sept-, spet

• stip-, styp-, ste-, steppe-, stappe-, steop-

From Old English stēop- (“deprived of a relative, step-”, prefix), from Proto-West Germanic *steupa-, from Proto-Germanic *steupa- (“orphaned, step-”).

The short vowel is due to regular shortening of long vowels before consonant clusters in Early Middle English. All of the words that stēop- was prefixed to in Old English were consonant-initial, so shortening occurred exceptionlessly.

• IPA^(key): /ˈstɛp-/

step-

1. step- (related through the marriage of a parent)

• English: step-
• Scots: step-, stap-

• “step-, combining element”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.