Other forms: steadied, steadying
Steady means it does not wobble and it does not change. A steady hand pouring wine into a full glass, a steady job that pays the same money every month, steady rain that goes on all afternoon.
It does three jobs at once: firmness (hold the ladder steady), regularity (a steady beat, steady progress), and reliability in a person (she is steady — you can leave anything with her). As a verb you steady yourself against a wall, or steady your voice before you speak. On its own, Steady! is shouted at someone about to fall over or about to say too much, and steady on is the British way of saying you have gone far enough. A steady girlfriend is a long-term one; going steady is dated, though everyone understands it. The adverb is steadily, and the everyday opposite is shaky — a shaky table, a shaky voice, a shaky start.
1adjectivesteadyFirmly fixed and not shaking or moving.~2%
“Keep the camera steady while I read the sign out.”
2adjectiveconstantContinuing at the same rate, without stopping or changing.~90%
“The car held a steady sixty all the way up the motorway.”
3adjectivesensibleSensible and reliable, not easily upset.~6%
“They wanted someone steady to run the office while she was away.”
4verbstopTo make something stop shaking, or to make yourself calm.~2%
“He steadied himself on the back of a chair and waited for the room to stop.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 16 sentences found in the wild and placed 16 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Also accepted in games: stable
Steady is stead plus -y: a stead is a place, and what has a place stays put. Middle English stedy may carry on Old English ġestæþþiġ, 'steadfast, stable, firm', or may be modelled on Middle Dutch stēdig. Swedish stadig and German stetig are the same idea still in daily use, and homestead, instead and steadfast are all cousins.
Middle Dutch
stēdig
Old English
stæþþiġ
Middle English
stedy
English, today
steady
Built from
From Middle English stedy, studi, stidiȝ, perhaps continuing Old English stæþþiġ, ġestæþþiġ (“steadfast, stable, firm, staid”), equivalent to stead + y; or calquing Middle Low German - or Middle Dutch stēdig. Cognate with stq stoadig (“steady”), West Frisian stadich (“slow”), Danish stedig, stadig, steeg, Swedish stadig, Icelandic stöðugur, German stätig, stetig. Compare also Old English ġestedegian (“to bring to a standstill”) and Dutch steeds (“more and more”). Adjective sense 8 is a nan-hbl-SG 在 (“confident, skilled”) literally “steady”.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA