Staircase

[f. STAIR sb. + CASE sb.²]

  1.  Originally, ‘The inclosure of a pair of Stairs, whether it be with Walls, or with Walls and Railes and Bannisters, &c.’ (Moxon, Mech. Exerc., 1679, p. 172); now usually a flight (or sometimes a whole series of flights) of stairs with their supporting framework, balusters, etc.

1624.  Wotton, Archit., I. 57. Of Staire-cases.

1634.  Brereton, Trav. (Chetham Soc.), 32. Here is a dainty stair-case, there being two pair of stairs which come out of the hall.

1726.  Leoni, Alberti’s Archit., I. 17 b. Stair-cases therefore are of two sorts … that which has no Steps, but is mounted by a Sloping Ascent, and the other is that which is mounted by Steps.

1762.  J. Wesley, Jrnl., 29 March. Who lived in the same staircase with ine at Christchurch.

1777.  Robertson, Hist. Amer., II. VII. 297. The ascent to it was by a stair-case of a hundred and fourteen steps.

1823.  P. Nicholson, Pract. Build., 184. The wall which supports the ends of the steps is called the stair-case.

1826.  Lamb, Elia, Ser. II. Pop. Fallacies, xi. The true Lady Marys and Lady Bettys … are consigned to the staircase and the lumber-room.

1848.  Dickens, Dombey, xliii. Florence … crept down the staircase.

1878.  Browning, La Saisiaz, 15. Till the landing on the staircase saw escape the latest spark.

  b.  transf.

a. 1668.  Lassels, Voy. Italy (1698), I. 46. When we came to Mount Sampion, one of the great stair-cases of Italy, we were forced … to go afoot.

1687.  Lovell, Thevenot’s Trav., I. 140. This Stair-case hath been made very easie to go down and up, for the convenience of the Oxen that go down to labour.

1781.  Gibbon, Decl. & F., xix. II. 156. A secret … staircase, scooped out of the rock that hangs over the stream of the Tigris.

1860.  Tyndall, Glac., II. xi. 290. I therefore took my axe,… and cut an oblique staircase up the wall of ice.

  c.  fig.

1645.  Baker, Apol., 19. Doth not the whole staire case by which all Learning … is ascended up by, lye open before them?

1650.  Fuller, Pisgah, IV. i. 17. Climax the mountain .., whose figure like that figure in Rhetorick ascends like a staire-case by degrees.

  † 2.  = staircase-shell (in 4). Obs.

1713.  Petiver, Aquat. Anim. Amboinæ, Tab. ii, Buccinum scalare verim … Royal Stair-Case. Ibid., Tab. xiii, Buccinum scalare … Small Stair-case.

1815.  S. Brookes, Conchol., 157. Staircase. Trochus perspectivus.

  3.  Phys. A continuous series of responses to nerve stimuli, varying from a minimal to a maximal intensity. (Syd. Soc. Lex., citing Romanes.)

[1871.  Bowditch, in Ber. d. k. Sächs. Gesellsch. d. Wissensch., Math.-Phys., XXIII. 669. Wir wollen eine so beschaffene Reihe von Zuckungen unter dem Namen einer Treppe zusammenfassen.]

1882.  Gaskell in Jrnl. Physiol., IV. 106. In both the strip from the tortoise’s auricle and the frog’s ventricle … a series of single stimulations produces a ‘staircase.’

1885.  McWilliam, Ibid., VI. 209. This phenomenon has been termed a ‘staircase of beats (aufsteigende Treppe).’

  4.  attrib. and Comb.: staircase-gallery, -head; -like adj.; staircase-shell, a shell of the genus Solarium, any member of the family Solariidæ.

1848.  Dickens, Dombey, xlvii. She paced her own room, opened the door and paced the *staircase-gallery outside.

1802.  G. Colman, Br. Grins, Elder Bro. (1819), 123. Crow, in the dark, now, reached the *stair-case head.

1881.  Mrs. Holman Hunt, Childr. Jerus., 102. They made their way up and down such *staircase-like rocks as in England would seem impossible.

1830.  Say, Amer. Conchol., Pl. 27. Scalaria..., a genus of very pretty shells, known by the name of *staircase shells by some collectors.

1896.  Lydekker, Roy. Nat. Hist., VI. 387. The so-called staircase-shells (Solariidæ).

  Hence Staircased a., furnished with a staircase; Staircasing vbl. sb., supplying or providing with a staircase or staircases.

1729.  in Willis & Clark, Cambridge (1886), I. 563. At a Congregation … agreed to proceed in Covering flooring sashing staircasing of the new Building.

1857.  S. G. Osborne, in Times, 16 July, 10/4. Dwellings in which human life is simply pig life glazed and staircased.

1909.  ‘Vernon Lee,’ in Engl. Rev., Jan., 223. On each of the two balconied and staircased belfries, pricked up like ears above the building’s monstrous front, there sways a weathervane.