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Step vs Climb - What's the difference?

step | climb |

In intransitive terms the difference between step and climb

is that step is to walk slowly, gravely, or resolutely while climb is to jump high.

In transitive terms the difference between step and climb

is that step is to set, as the foot while climb is to move (especially up and down something) by gripping with the hands and using the feet.

step

English

Verb

  • To move the foot in walking; to advance or recede by raising and moving one of the feet to another resting place, or by moving both feet in succession.
  • To walk; to go on foot; especially, to walk a little distance.
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-01, volume=407, issue=8838
    • , page=13 (Technology Quarterly), magazine=(The Economist) , title= Ideas coming down the track , passage=A “moving platform” scheme
  • To walk slowly, gravely, or resolutely.
  • * Home the swain retreats, His flock before him stepping to the fold. —
  • (figuratively) To move mentally; to go in imagination.
  • * They are stepping almost three thousand years back into the remotest antiquity. — (Alexander Pope)
  • To set, as the foot.
  • (nautical) To fix the foot of (a mast) in its step ; to erect.
  • * 1898 , (Joseph Conrad),
    • We put everything straight, stepped the long-boat's mast for our skipper, who was in charge of her, and I was not sorry to sit down for a moment.

    Derived terms

    * step aside (to walk a little distance from the rest; to retire from company) * step down * step forth (to move or come forth) * step forward * step in/step into * step-in * step out ** (military) To increase the length, but not the rapidity, of the step, extending it to thirty-tree inches ** To go out for a short distance or a short time * step short (military) (to diminish the length or rapidity of the step according to the established rules) * step off (to measure by steps, or paces; hence, to divide, as a space, or to form a series of marks, by successive measurements, as with dividers) * step up

    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)

    • Synonyms

    * stride

    Derived terms

    (Terms derived from the noun "step") * in step * out of step * step by step * stepwise * Back step', ' Half step , etc. See under back, half, etc. * Step grate : a form of grate for holding fuel, in which the bars rise above one another in the manner of steps. * To take steps : to take action; to move in a matter. * one step at a time: slowly and cautiously

    See also

    * step-

    Statistics

    *

    Anagrams

    * * * 1000 English basic words ----

    climb

    English

    Verb

  • To ascend; rise; to go up.
    • Prices climbed steeply.
  • * Dryden
    • Black vapours climb aloft, and cloud the day.
  • To mount; to move upwards on.
    • They climbed the mountain.
    Climbing a tree
  • To scale; to get to the top of something.
  • * {{quote-news, year=2010, date=May 22, author=David Harrison
    • , title=American boy, 13, is youngest person to climb Everest , work=Daily Telegraph online citation , page= , passage=He is a curly-haired schoolboy barely in his teens, but 13-year-old Jordan Romero from California has become the youngest person to climb Mount Everest.}}
  • To move (especially up and down something) by gripping with the hands and using the feet.
  • * 1900 , (James Frazer), (The Golden Bough) Chapter 65
    • A priest clad in a white robe climbs the tree and with a golden sickle cuts the mistletoe, which is caught in a white cloth.
  • * 1900 , , ''(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz)
    • She thought she must have been mistaken at first, for none of the scarecrows in Kansas ever wink; but presently the figure nodded its head to her in a friendly way. Then she climbed down from the fence and walked up to it, while Toto ran around the pole and barked.
  • * 2008 , Tony Atkins, Dragonhawk - the Turning
    • Cutter and Bolan climbed around the furniture and piled into the back of the truck.
  • to practise the sport of climbing
  • to jump high
  • * {{quote-news, year=2010, date=December 28
    • , author=Paul Fletcher, title=Man City 4 - 0 Aston Villa, work=BBC citation , page= , passage=The defender climbed majestically at the near post to convert Johnson's corner. }}
  • * {{quote-news, year=2008, date=September 13
    • , title=Ospreys Glasgow Magners League, work=South Wales Evening Post citation , page= , passage=As the game moved towards injury time, the Ospreys forced a line-out which Jonathan Thomas climbed high to take.}}
  • * {{quote-news, year=2001, date=December 29, author=Derick Allsop
    • , title=Bolton's nine men hit back to steal a point, work=Daily Telegraph online citation , page= , passage=Four minutes of stoppage time were virtually up when Ricketts climbed to head in the equaliser from substitute Nicky Southall's centre.}}
  • To move to a higher position on the social ladder.
  • (botany) Of plants, to grow upwards by clinging to something.

    • Usage notes

    In the past, the forms clomb'' and ''clumb were encountered as simple past and past participle forms; these forms are now archaic or dialectical.

    Derived terms

    * climb down * climb down someone's throat * climb up * climb the ladder * climb the walls * climber * declimb * have a mountain to climb * unclimbed
    Synonyms
    (get to the top of) * scale

    Noun

    (wikipedia climb) (en noun)
  • An act of climbing.
  • * 2007 , Nigel Shepherd, Complete Guide to Rope Techniques
    • Make sure that you keep checking to see that everything remains safe throughout the climb .
  • The act of getting to somewhere more elevated.
  • * 2012 , July 15. Richard Williams in Guardian Unlimited, Tour de France 2012: Carpet tacks cannot force Bradley Wiggins off track
    • The Mur de Péguère is a savage little climb , its last four kilometres a narrow tunnel of trees and excited spectators urging on the straining riders.
  • * 1999 , B. Keith Jones, The Roomie Do Me Blues
    • I guess the room wasn't so bad, except for the climb to get there. The stairs were destined to be a serious health hazard.
  • An upwards struggle
  • * {{quote-news
    • , year=1998 , date=September 30 , author=AP , title=Worst May Lie Ahead For Asia, Report Warns , work=Milwaukee Journal Sentinel citation , page= , passage=After a decade of prosperity, millions of Asians are likely to be pushed into poverty, and the climb out of poverty will stall for millions of others}}

    Derived terms

    * rate of climb