staircase

plural staircases · alternative archaic stair-case

1. A flight of stairs; a stairway.

   I was on the staircase by the bell / Blinded by the black magician's spell

   2011, “13 Candles”, performed by Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats

2. A connected set of flights of stairs; a stairwell.

   Oliver immediately gets a 'guided tour, Felix wheeling through libraries and endless colour-coded rooms, up and down staircases and along echoing halls where various "dead relly[s]" stare down from the walls.

   2023 November 13, Rosalind Jana, “Saltburn and the bizarre life of Britain's stately homes”, in BBC

   2 more examples

   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.

   1914 November, Louis Joseph Vance, “An Outsider […]”, in Munsey’s Magazine, volume LIII, number II, New York, N.Y.: The Frank A[ndrew] Munsey Company, […], published 1915, →OCLC, chapter III (Accessory After the Fact), page 382, column 1

   When Timothy and Julia hurried up the staircase to the bedroom floor, where a considerable commotion was taking place, Tim took Barry Leach with him. He had him gripped firmly by the arm, since he felt it was not safe to let him loose, and he had no immediate idea what to do with him.

   1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 19, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC

3. A set of locks (enclosed sections of waterway) mounted one above the next.

present singular third person staircases · participle present staircasing · participle past staircased · past staircased · alternative archaic stair-case

1. transitiveTo modify (a signal, a graph, etc.) to reduce a smooth curve to a series of discrete steps.

   This leads to much smoother reconstructions in regions of moderate gradient and thus prevents staircasing.

   2006, Nikos Paragios, Yunmei Chen, Olivier D. Faugeras, editors, Handbook of Mathematical Models in Computer Vision, Springer Science & Business Media, →ISBN, page 26

2. businessTo increase one's share in a co-ownership.

   It is a good idea to make plans for staircasing when you first buy your shared ownership home.

   2018, Dave Cowan, Helen Carr, Alison Wallace, Ownership, Narrative, Things, Springer, →ISBN, page 139