Other forms: stepsisters
A stepsister is the daughter your parent's new partner brought with them. My stepsister, two stepsisters, her stepsister's wedding.
She shares no parent with you, which is what separates a stepsister from a half-sister, who shares one. Cinderella gave the word its unhappy flavour and most real ones do not deserve it. Note the step- prefix, from an Old English word about bereavement.
1nounstepsisterThe daughter of a parent's new partner.
“When her father remarried, she gained a stepsister the same age as her.”
stepsister is a family relation.
Middle English
steppen
English
step
English, today
stepsister
Built from
From step- + sister. 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