stepping

Pluralsteppings (some meanings)

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of step.

   Stepping carefully across the icy bridge, the hikers reached the far side.

   The toddler is stepping onto the curb for the very first time.

   Note

   One spelling does two jobs within the verb. As a participle it builds the progressive with be (is stepping onto the curb). As a gerund it heads a noun phrase (stepping aside has consequences). The gerund still behaves like a verb, taking adverbs and, in the sense of setting down a foot, an object. That is how to tell it from the noun for a step taken, which can be pluralized and take an article.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The action of lifting one foot and setting it down in order to move forward.

   The rhythmic stepping of the marchers echoed across the empty square.

   His heavy stepping on the staircase woke the whole household.

   Similartread, footfall

   Note

   The noun works both ways, as a mass noun and as a count noun. Uncountable, it names the sound or manner of walking as a whole: the stepping of marchers on a square. Countable, it splits into individual steps and takes the plural steppings, a slightly poetic choice, as in Miriandra Rota's line "In the steppings of my feet, you are always my mother" (2005).

3. 3
   noununcountable

   An African-American dance form in which the whole body becomes an instrument, producing complex rhythms through footsteps, claps, and spoken word.

   The sorority's stepping drew a roaring crowd at the homecoming rally.

   He fell in love with stepping after watching a routine on campus.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A specific version of a CPU model, set apart from earlier versions by added or removed features or by which bugs are present or fixed.

   The B2 stepping corrected a floating-point bug that plagued the first release.

   Reviewers noted that the latest stepping ran noticeably cooler under heavy load.

   Similarrevision

   Note

   Programmers care about steppings because bugs belong to particular ones. The 80386's early steppings were buggy enough that some software checks it is not running on one before trusting the chip. A stepping comes from changes to the silicon mask set rather than a new design. The word is countable in this sense: early steppings, later steppings, or a single stepping named by its code, such as B2.

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