escalator.
Anything that escalates.
Meaning & usage
Anything that escalates.
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.
An upward or progressive course.
An escalator clause.
They agreed to a cost-of-living escalator.
Where this word comes from
By genericization 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.
To move by escalator.
We escalatored to the second floor.
Where this word comes from
By genericization 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.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.