Step-free means reachable without having to climb any stairs. Step-free access, a step-free route, step-free from the street.
It is the standard term on transport maps and means a lift or a ramp all the way, without a single step. Only a minority of London Underground stations are step-free, which is a legacy of building deep tunnels a century ago.
1adjectivestep-freeReachable without having to climb any stairs.
“The station now has lifts, so there's step-free access from the street to every platform.”
step-free is a quality.
Step plus -free, on the pattern of the many -free compounds English forms.
Middle English
steppen
English
step
English, today
step-free
Built from
From step + -free. step comes from Middle English steppen. From Middle English steppen, from Old English steppan (“to step, go, proceed, advance”), stepe (“step”), from Proto-West Germanic stappjan, from Proto-Germanic stapjaną (“to step”), stapiz (“step”), from Proto-Indo-European stebʰ- (“to support, stomp, curse, be amazed”). Cognate with West Frisian stappe (“to step”), frr stape (“to walk, trudge”), Dutch stappen (“to step, walk”), wa steper (“to walk away, leave”), German stapfen (“to trudge, stomp, plod”) and further to Slavic Polish stąpać (“to stomp, stamp, step, tread”), Russian ступать and Polish stopień (“step, stair, rung, degree”), Russian степень. Related to stamp, stomp.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA