escalator

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   Anything that escalates.

   Fourth, communication researchers study the role of stress and negative attitudes as key contributors to conflict, anger as an escalator of conflict, and emotional residues as barriers to reconciliation.

2. 2
   noun

   A motor-driven mechanical device consisting of a continuous loop of steps that automatically conveys people from one floor to another.

   There is a plastic molly-guard covering the escalator's shutdown button to prevent little kids from pushing it and stopping the escalator.

3. 3
   noun

   An upward or progressive course.

   Lots of people fell for the pitch that real estate was an up-only escalator into the American Dream

4. 4
   noun

   An escalator clause.

   They agreed to a cost-of-living escalator.

5. 5
   verb

   To move by escalator.

   We escalatored to the second floor.

6. 6
   noun

   a stairway whose steps move continuously on a circulating belt

7. 7
   noun

   a clause in a contract that provides for an increase or a decrease in wages or prices or benefits etc. depending on certain conditions (as a change in the cost of living index)

Etymology

From the former trademark Escalator, created by American inventor Charles Seeberger in 1900, from Latin ē- (“from, out of”) + scala (“ladder”) + -tor, which forms nouns of agency; see the appendix. Broader usage may be influenced by its derivative escalate, by surface analysis, escalate + -or. For an alternative etymology, see the Online Etymology Dictionary.