Noun

(en noun)

An opening in anything made by breaking or parting.

An opening allowing passage or entrance.

An opening that implies a breach or defect.

A vacant space or time.

A hiatus.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-03, volume=408, issue=8847, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= The machine of a new soul , passage=The yawning gap in neuroscientists’ understanding of their topic is in the intermediate scale of the brain’s anatomy. Science has a passable knowledge of how individual nerve cells, known as neurons, work. It also knows which visible lobes and ganglia of the brain do what. But how the neurons are organised in these lobes and ganglia remains obscure. Yet this is the level of organisation that does the actual thinking—and is, presumably, the seat of consciousness.}}

A mountain or hill pass.

(label) A sheltered area of coast between two cliffs (mostly restricted to place names).

(label) The regions between the outfielders.

The shortfall between the amount the medical insurer will pay to the service provider and the scheduled fee for the item.

* 2008 , Eileen Willis, Louise Reynolds, Helen Keleher, Understanding the Australian Health Care System , page 5,

Under bulk billing the patient does not pay a gap , and the medical practitioner receives 85% of the scheduled fee.

* {{quote-news, year=2012, date=May 13, author=Andrew Benson, work=BBC Sport

, title= Williams's Pastor Maldonado takes landmark Spanish Grand Prix win , passage=That left Maldonado with a 6.2-second lead. Alonso closed in throughout their third stints, getting the gap down to 4.2secs before Maldonado stopped for the final time on lap 41.}}

* {{quote-book, year=1995, author=Robert E. Knoll, chapter=A University on the Defensive 1920-1927

, title= Prairie University: A History of the University of Nebraska, page=70 , passage=When Charles Bessey suddenly died in 1916 at age seventy, he left a gap that was impossible to fill; and though his protégé. R. J. Pool, was a man of intelligence and character, he did not have Bessey’s authority.}}

(label) (usually written as "the gap") The disparity between the indigenous and non-indigenous communities with regard to life expectancy, education, health, etc.

Noun

(en noun)

An advance or movement made from one foot to the other; a pace.

*

*:Turning back, then, toward the basement staircase, she began to grope her way through blinding darkness, but had taken only a few uncertain steps when, of a sudden, she stopped short and for a little stood like a stricken thing, quite motionless save that she quaked to her very marrow in the grasp of a great and enervating fear.

A rest, or one of a set of rests, for the foot in ascending or descending, as a stair, or a rung of a ladder.

*Sir (Henry Wotton) (1568-1639)

*:The breadth of every single step or stair should be never less than one foot.

*

, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=4 , passage=One morning I had been driven to the precarious refuge afforded by the steps of the inn, after rejecting offers from the Celebrity to join him in a variety of amusements. But even here I was not free from interruption, for he was seated on a horse-block below me, playing with a fox terrier.}}

A running board where passengers step to get on and off the bus.

:

The space passed over by one movement of the foot in walking or running. Used also figuratively of any kind of progress.

:

*(Isaac Newton) (1642-1727)

*:To derive two or three general principles of motion from phenomena, and afterwards to tell us how the properties and actions of all corporeal things follow from those manifest principles, would be a very great step in philosophy.

A small space or distance.

:

A print of the foot; a footstep; a footprint; track.

A gait; manner of walking.

:

*1900 , , (The House Behind the Cedars) , Chapter I,

*:Warwick passed through one of the wide brick arches and traversed the building with a leisurely step .

Proceeding; measure; action; act.

*(Alexander Pope) (1688-1744)

*:The reputation of a man depends on the first steps he makes in the world.

*(William Cowper) (1731-1800)

*:Beware of desperate steps . The darkest day, Live till to-morrow, will have passed away.

*(George Washington Cable) (1844-1925)

*:I have lately taken steps to relieve the old gentleman's distresses.

(lb) A walk; passage.

*(John Dryden)

*:Conduct my steps to find the fatal tree.

(lb) A portable framework of stairs, much used indoors in reaching to a high position.

(lb) A framing in wood or iron which is intended to receive an upright shaft; specif., a block of wood, or a solid platform upon the keelson, supporting the heel of the mast.

(lb) One of a series of offsets, or parts, resembling the steps of stairs, as one of the series of parts of a cone pulley on which the belt runs.

(lb) A bearing in which the lower extremity of a spindle or a vertical shaft revolves.

(lb) The interval between two contiguous degrees of the scale.

:Usage note: The word tone is often used as the name of this interval; but there is evident incongruity in using tone for indicating the interval between tones. As the word scale is derived from the Italian scala , a ladder, the intervals may well be called steps.

(lb) A change of position effected by a motion of translation.

:(William Kingdon Clifford)