Also 4 stoppyngston, 7 Sc. stopping stane, stepping ston. [STEPPING vbl. sb.]
1. A stone for stepping upon. a. A stone placed in the bed of a stream or on muddy or swampy ground, to facilitate crossing on foot. Chiefly plural, referring to a row or line of such stones.
c. 1325. Gloss. W. de Bibbesw., in Wright, Voc., 159. S[t]eping-stones passueres.
c. 1340. Nominale (Skeat), 515. Caliow fusil et passuer. Flynt firehiron stoppyngston.
1550. [see SIKET].
1579. Nottingham Rec., IV. 189. Steppingstones to be sett be tweene Frear Poole.
1603. Reg. Mag. Sig. Scot., 506/1. Passand to ane grene dyk besouth the stopping stanes of the Ile-ark.
1655. Lamont, Diary (Maitl. Club), 91. The water … ran away some of the stapping stons at Nether Largo.
1682. O. Heywood, Diaries (1881), II. 303. Going over stepping stones at a brook.
1733. Swift, On Poetry, 169. Like stepping Stones to save a Stride, In Streets where Kennels are too wide.
1815. Scott, Guy M., viii. Once he [the Dominie] fell into the brook crossing at the stepping-stones.
1833. Tennyson, Miller’s Dau., 54. The tall flag-flower that sprung Beside the noisy steppingstones.
1852. E. W. Benson, in Life (1899), I. iii. 110. I reached the Abbey by the stepping-stones.
1899. Crockett, Kit Kennedy, 189. Kit crossed the brook at the stepping-stones.
b. A raised stone on which the foot can be placed to facilitate a climb or ascent; spec. a ‘horse-block’ (Halliwell). rare in literal sense: see 2.
1837. Dickens, Pickw., xxviii. The stile … was full three feet high, and had only a couple of stepping-stones.
1841. G. P. R. James, Brigand, xi. He sat down on one of the stepping-stones placed to aid travellers in mounting their horses.
c. transf. A place for a break of journey.
1849. Noad, Electricity (ed. 3, 104). The intermediate clouds serving as intermediate conductors, or stepping-stones as it were for the electric fluid.
1856. Stanley, Sinai & Pal., xii. 398. ‘Chittim’ thus became the first stepping-stone to the isles of the West.
1880. A. R. Wallace, Isl. Life, 274. Some islands may have intervened between them [the Galapagos] and the coast, and have served as stepping-stones by which the passage to them of various organisms would be greatly facilitated.
2. fig. Something that is used as a means of rising in the world, or of making progress towards some object; often, a position, office, or the like, that serves to afford opportunity for further advancement.
1653. Baxter, Christian Concord, 47. Some Ministers lately put in, are young, weak, and indiscreet, and fit matter for them to contemn, and modestly to make stepping stones to their own reputation.
1715. Chappelow, Right Way to be Rich (1717), 165. She has abused them, and made them Stepping-Stones to her own Grandeur.
1773. W. Eden, in Jesse, Selwyn & Contemp. (1844), III. 59. His office … would suit our friend Hare exactly, as an introduction or stepping-stone to something better.
1806. G. Rose, Diaries (1860), II. 248. [They] would see through it too clearly to allow themselves to be made stepping-stones for their Lordships to mount into power by.
1850. Tennyson, In Mem., i. I held it truth … That men may rise on stepping-stones Of their dead selves to higher things.
1855. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., xi. III. 49. Those obstacles his genius had turned into stepping stones.
1884. H. Sweet, in 13th Addr. Philol. Soc., 83. Such a shorthand would serv as a stepping-stone from the ordinary Roman alfabet to such a one as Bell’s Vizibl Speech [sic].
1891. Speaker, 11 July, 36/1. A type of snobbery which regards the established religion as a stepping-stone to respectability.
1898. R. B. O’Brien, Life C. S. Parnell, I. viii. 168. Agrarian revolution was to be made the stepping-stone to separation from England.
