The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
STAIR
Definition of STAIR
noun
A single step in a staircase.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Where it comes from
From Middle English steire, staire, stayre, stayer, steir, steyre, steyer, from Old English stǣġer (“stair, staircase”), from Proto-West Germanic *staigri, from Proto-Germanic *staigriz (“stairs, scaffolding”), from Proto-Indo-European *steygʰ- (“to walk, proceed, march, climb”). Cognate with Dutch steiger (“a stair, step, wharf, pier, scaffolding”), Middle Low German steiger, steir (“scaffolding”), German Low German Steiger (“a scaffold; trestle”). Related to Old English āstǣġan (“to ascend, go up, embark”), Old English stīġan (“to go, move, reach; ascend, mount, go up, spring up, rise; scale”), German Stiege (“a flight of stairs”). More at sty.
Etymology via Wiktionary (CC BY-SA).
Word DNA
Line of descent
4 recorded generations before English.
Deepest traced root
2nd
of 59 source languages in OUTLIER
14.3%
of traced words share this origin (11,293)
How it is built
Same root, STAIR · 4 relatives in the game
Its etymology also names Dutch, Middle Low German.
Every Proto-Indo-European word → · The Word DNA of OUTLIER →
OUTLIER scores every word on how unusual it is, and that number is not published. Working it out at the board is the game.
STAIR in OUTLIER
Players have found it on 7 boards so far. 10 players have found it across Outlier's history.
It first turned up on Day 24, 13 June 2026. The most recent board was Day 130, 27 September 2026. Nobody has seen it on a board for 29 days.
First found by a player on Day 24, 13 June 2026.
Also on
Built from these letters
STAIR starts with S and ends with R. Sorted, its letters read AIRST - the shape to hunt for when the grid is scrambled. No letter is used twice, which makes it an isogram.
Same letters, different word
8 other words use exactly these letters. Worth knowing at the board: an anagram fits a grid the same way.
Words that start STAIR
Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.
Also seen on Day 24
Could you have found STAIR?
OUTLIER is a daily word game. One grid, the same grid for everybody, and the words nobody else spots are the ones that pay. This word was on Day 24 - and most players walked straight past it.
Play today's OUTLIER