staircase

Etymology

stair + case

noun

1. A flight of stairs; a stairway.
   I was on the staircase by the bell / Blinded by the black magician's spell 2011, “13 Candles”, performed by Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats
2. A connected set of flights of stairs; a stairwell.
   When Timothy and Julia hurried up the staircase to the bedroom floor, where a considerable commotion was taking place, Tim took Barry Leach with him. He had him gripped firmly by the arm, since he felt it was not safe to let him loose, and he had no immediate idea what to do with him. 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 19, in The China Governess
3. A set of locks (enclosed sections of waterway) mounted one above the next.

verb

1. (transitive) To modify (a signal, a graph, etc.) to reduce a smooth curve to a series of discrete steps.
   This leads to much smoother reconstructions in regions of moderate gradient and thus prevents staircasing. 2006, Nikos Paragios, Yunmei Chen, Olivier D. Faugeras, editors, Handbook of Mathematical Models in Computer Vision, Springer Science & Business Media, page 26
2. (real estate) To increase one's share in a co-ownership.
   It is a good idea to make plans for staircasing when you first buy your shared ownership home. 2018, Dave Cowan, Helen Carr, Alison Wallace, Ownership, Narrative, Things, Springer, page 139