Steeped means left in hot liquid until the flavour comes out. Tea, herbs, dried fruit.
The literal sense belongs to cooking and to tea, where steeping and brewing mean the same thing and the time matters. The figurative sense is where the word does most of its work, and somewhere steeped in history has absorbed it over centuries, while a person steeped in a tradition has been immersed in it for years. It always takes in, and the picture of long slow soaking runs through both senses.
1adjectivesteepedLeft to soak in hot liquid to draw out flavour.
“The fruit had been steeped in brandy overnight.”
2adjectivethoroughlyThoroughly immersed in a quality or tradition.
“The whole town is steeped in history.”
Old English
stēap
Middle English
steep
English
steep
English, today
steeped
steep comes from Middle English steep, from Old English stēap. From Middle English steep, from Old English stēap (“high”), from Proto-Germanic staupaz, from Proto-Indo-European (s)tewp- (“to push, stick”). Compare Old Frisian stāp "high, towering"; > Modern stq stiep (“steep”), Dutch stoop (“grand; proud”), Middle High German stouf (“towering cliff, precipice”), Middle High German stief (“steep”)). The Proto-Indo-European root (and related) has many and varied descendants, including English stub; compare also Scots stap (“to strike, to forcibly insert”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA