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Korinka Posted 20 years ago
Vocabulary

A shallow step

Hi! Can anyone help me?
I found this definition of the "shallow step":
At Eton College, England, a shallow step dividing the court into an inner and an outer portion.
Source
: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

But still I don't understand what this idiom means and how one can use it...
  

Top answer

I don't believe it's an idiom. A shallow step simply means one that is not a lot lower than the one above it. The inner court was only slightly lower than the outer.

  • I don't believe it's an idiom.
  • A shallow step simply means one that is not a lot lower than the one above it.
  • The inner court was only slightly lower than the outer.
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5 Answers
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I don't believe it's an idiom.

A shallow step simply means one that is not a lot lower than the one above it. The inner court was only slightly lower than the outer.
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Grammar Geek, thanks for your answer, but I met this sentence:
They trotted back up the shallow steps.
Does it mean the steps were tiny or what?
Thank you in advance!
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Oh - was that sentence anywhere in your original post?

Anyway, "trotted" is actually a horse's gait, but in this sense means walked briskly, not quite at a run. And the shallow steps just means that the steps are only a few inches difference in height from one to the next. The steps may be very wide or very narrow, but they are not high.
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this sentence conveys the meaning of a group of people going up quickly a flight of stairs where the steps are not higher than 0.1 meter.

ik
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Ok, thank you very much, Grammar Geek and Inchoateknowledge!
It's good to know there was nothing more than that, no metaphor or idiom.

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