[mod.L. use of med.L. stapēs (staped-) stirrup. Cf. It. stapede (sense 1).
In the 16th c. stapes was regarded as the standard Latin word for stirrup (for which there was no word in classical Latin, as stirrups were not used by the ancients); it is in Estienne, Cooper, and two Latin-Ger. dictionaries cited by Diefenbach. Du Cange has one example of stapes, and one each of stapedium (1314), stapeda, and strapes. The word may perh. be an alteration of med.L. stapha, staffa (= It. staffa stirrup), after L. stāre to stand and ped-em, pēs foot.]
1. The innermost of the three ossicles in the tympanum of the ear in mammals; named from its stirrup-like shape.
The Sicilian anatomist J. Ph. Ingrassia (died 1580), in his posthumous notes to Galen, De Ossibus (1603), claims the discovery of this bone, and says that he called it stapha, but others, more solicitous about Latinity, preferred stapes or strapeda. In 1564 Eustachius (De Auditus Organis, Opusc. Anat. 153) asserts that he made the discovery before Ingrassia did, and states that some call the ossicle staffa or stapes.
1670. Phil. Trans., V. 2060. The Stapes of the Ear. Ibid. (1705), XXV. 1983. The Sides or Branches of the Stapes are furrowed on the inside.
1877. Burnett, Ear, 75. The smallest bone in the body … is the stapes or stirrup.
2. Surg. (See quot.)
1875. Knight, Dict. Mech., Stapes, a bandage for the foot, making a figure-of-8 round the ankle.
