escalatorn.
/ˈɛskəleɪtə/, U.S. /ˈɛskəˌleɪdər/ Originally U.S.
1.
a. (Originally a trade-name.) A moving staircase made on the endless-chain principle, so that the steps ascend or descend continuously, for carrying passengers up or down.
ΘΚΠ
society > travel > means of travel > a conveyance > other means of conveyance > [noun] > escalator
moving staircase1897
moving stairway1897
escalator1900
moving stair1901
1900 N.Y. Jrnl. 25 Nov. 59/2 The escalator..is a movable stairway built by the Otis Elevator Company for the use of passengers of the Manhattan Elevated Railway.
1904 Daily Chron. 21 Nov. 5/5 [New York] There are to be four elevator shafts, besides stairways and ‘escalators’.
a1910 ‘O. Henry’ Trimmed Lamp (1916) 131 You will perceive that the Bee-Hive was not a fashionable department store, with escalators and pompadours.
1910 Daily News 2 July 10 In the course of the hearing counsel referred to a proposed moving staircase as an ‘escalator’.
1911 Engineer 6 Oct. 356/3 The escalator or moving stairway connecting the ‘Piccadilly’ and District Railway.
1923 Spectator 29 Sept. 411/2 Three escalators will serve the Bakerloo Tube.
1968 Listener 20 June 817/1 A counterblast to the prurience of Playboy and the escalator ads.
b. figurative.
ΚΠ
1927 Brit. Weekly 14 Apr. 38/2 The mechanism of a great social ‘escalator’ whereby the ‘down and outs’ of Manchester have restored to them the loving ministry of Christian service.
1927 L. MacNeice in Oxf. Poetry 18 And watching the Before become Beyond Down the escalator shifting of the Past.
1943 J. D. Hicks Short Hist. Amer. Democracy xxxv. 729 He climbed aboard the political escalator in 1899 when he became a councilman.
1950 Economist 9 Dec. 1003/1 Prices and wages are fellow-travellers on the same upward escalator.
1967 D. Boulton Objection Overruled i. 20 The Serbian assassin's shot..put the world on an irreversible escalator to multiple war.
2. attributive, esp. designating a clause, contract, agreement, or the like, that provides for an increase (occasionally, a decrease) in prices, wages, armaments, etc., to meet specified contingencies.
ΚΠ
1930 N.Y. Times 18 Apr. 2/1 The so-called safeguarding, or contingency, clause, sometimes referred to as the escalator provision.
1930 Times 1 May 16/3 The existence and implications of the ‘contingent’ or ‘escalator’ clause of the Treaty are naturally of importance from the American point of view.
1932 Daily Express 1 July 9/1 France..wants an ‘escalator’ clause inserted in the agreement which would link up the war debts to America with this proposed fund.
1948 Time 7 June 5/3 Labor leaders have never liked cost-of-living ‘escalator’ contracts, on the grounds that they tie the worker to a fixed standard of living.
1960 Farmer & Stockbreeder 23 Feb. 7/2 Cattle prices are subject to escalator adjustment.
1963 Economist 5 Jan. 50/1 ‘Escalator’ mortgages, which deliberately bunch repayment towards the end of the life of the mortgage.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1933; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
<
n.1900