Origin and history of two-step

"a completed movement of the foot in walking," Old English steppa (Mercian), stæpe, stepe (West Saxon) "an act of stepping; a footprint," also "a stair, rung of a ladder," and by late Old English "manner of walking," from the source of step (v.). Compare Old Frisian, Middle Dutch, Dutch stap, Old High German stapfo, German Stapfe "footstep").

Also "distance traversed by a step" (mid-13c.), which led to the use of step as a unit of linear measure (late 13c.) equivalent to about 2.5 feet or a half-pace. In dancing, from 1670s. The specific meaning "type of military pace" is from 1798.

It is attested from late Old English as "degree on a scale, degree in progress or advance," in virtue, sin, etc. The notion is perhaps of a step as a support for the foot in ascending or descending. The figurative meaning "action which leads toward a result, a proceeding in a series of them" is recorded from 1540s.

The warning phrase watch your step is attested from 1911; Wycliffe (late 14c.) has keep thy foot in essentially the same sense. Step by step indicating steady progression is from 1580s. To follow in (someone's) steps "follow the example of" is from mid-13c.

"1 more than one, the number which is one more than one; a symbol representing this number;" Old English twa "two," the feminine and neuter form. The masculine twegen survived as twain.

They are from Proto-Germanic *twa (source also of Old Saxon and Old Frisian twene, twa, Old Norse tveir, tvau, Dutch twee, Old High German zwene, zwo, German zwei, Gothic twai), from PIE *duwo, variant of the root *dwo- "two."

Two cheers for _____, expressing qualified enthusiasm, is recorded by 1951 (in E.M. Forster's title "Two Cheers for Democracy"), based on the traditional three cheers for ______, which is attested from 1751. Two-by-four for a post or other length of wood having a cross-section of 2 inches by 4 inches is by 1884.

round dance performed by couples to music in triple time, extraordinarily popular as a fashionable dance from late 18c. to late 19c. (the dance itself probably of Bohemian origin), 1779, walse, in a translation of "Die Leiden des jungen Werthers" from a French translation, which has walse; from German Waltzer, from walzen "to roll, dance," from Old High German walzan "to turn, roll."

This is from Proto-Germanic *walt- (cognate with Old Norse velta), from PIE root *wel- (3) "to turn, revolve." Related verbs include Middle English walt (v.) "to turn over, be overturned; surge, well up" (c. 1200); provincial walter "waver, totter;" also compare welter.

Described in 1825 as "a riotous and indecent German dance" [Walter Hamilton, "A Hand-Book or Concise Dictionary of Terms Used in the Arts and Sciences"].

The music struck up a beautiful air, and the dancers advanced a few steps, when suddenly, to my no small horror and amazement, the gentlemen seized the ladies round the waist, and all, as if intoxicated by this novel juxtaposition, began to whirl about the room, like a company of Bacchanalians dancing round a statue of the jolly god. "A waltz!" exclaimed I, inexpressibly shocked, "have I lived to see Scotch women waltz?" [The Edinburgh Magazine, April 1820]

[T]he waltz became a craze at the end of the [eighteenth] century, a double-dactylic, joyful experience of liberation, breaking resolutely away from the proscriptions of the minuet and the philosophy inherent in the minuet, which had emphasized a pattern of order and reason overseen by a sovereign, the individual submerged in the pattern. [Miller Williams, "Patterns of Poetry"]