Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. the treadmill.

1846		Swell’s Night Guide 59: I does the safe, if they cops me it’s nix; six veeks, a fly at the stepper and turn up.
1859		Matsell Vocabulum.
1865		Leaves from Diary of Celebrated Burglar 144/2: Upon a signal being given (the ringing of a bell) every occupier of an alternative box instantly jumps on the ‘stepper’ or treadmill, and holding on by an iron bar running the length of the ‘mill,’ commences his ‘getting up stairs’.
1873		Sl. Dict.
1882		Dundee Courier 18 Aug. 7/3: Proper quod; plenty of grub, and work as you like. No steppers, only pick oakum.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 12 Sept. 5/3: But fancy when about to be sentenced, as we certainly will be some day, if a female enters court and propounds wedded bliss as the alternative. Come ‘stepper,’ come crank, come oakum, come skilly – / ‘Stone walls do not a prison make, / Nor iron bars a cage,’ / for the merry bachelor.

2. a trotting-horse.

1846		Thackeray Diary of C. Jeames de la Pluche in Works III (1898) 385: A better pair of steppers I dafy you to see in hany curracle.
1852		G.C. Mundy Our Antipodes I 58: The wealthy emancipist [...] who had resolved to have the highest steppers in Sydney.
1877		H. Hartigan Stray Leaves (1st ser.) 120: ‘The horse is a stepper, an’ I wouldnt wish to sit behind a better’.
1879		G.R. Sims Dagonet Ballads 79: I bought a new hoss with the money,—I wanted to be a bit flash. I bid for a beautiful stepper.
1886		Field 16 Jan. n.p.: The man who wants a pair of steppers [F&H].
1899		C. Rook Hooligan Nights 79: The landlord had a smart stepper an’ a cart.
1906		S. Ford Shorty McCabe 58: We [...] hitched a couple of auction-house steppers, and lit out on the town trail. [Ibid.] 165: A heavy-weight person [...] coming toward us behind a pair of nervous steppers.

3. a door-step cleaner, a ‘step-girl’.

1852		Ragged School Union Mag. IV 102: An attempt has been made to provide girls with work as ‘Steppers,’ or cleaners of doorsteps, but it is only partially successful.
1884		All Year Round 18 Oct. 29/2: Door-step cleaners—known among themselves and their own class as steppers .

4. a good dancer.

1861		Hills & Plains I 36: ‘She’s a first-rate stepper [...] I saw her step out very well when Ochter took the reins’.
1910		in H.T. Sampson Ghost Walks (1988) 504: The feature is the dancing of Rastus. He takes high rank as a stepper.
1923		R. McAlmon Companion Volume 244: This blond lady, Rose, was a fast stepper.
1934		O.O. McIntyre New York Day by Day 12 Jan. [synd. col.] In the old days Fred Stone and other rising steppers regarded Fagin as their idol.
1953		F. Paley Rumble on the Docks (1955) 57: She can dance [...] What a stepper!

5. (US) a promiscuous woman [a judgmental use of step out v. (2)].

1953		J. Thompson Savage Night (1991) 6: Mrs. Winroy is quite a stepper.
1968		J. Colebrook Cross of Lassitude 202: Your aunt’s sure one of the steppers.
1980		E. Folb Runnin’ Down Some Lines 118: Teenage vernacular is heavily laced with expressions borrowed from the pimp’s vocabulary. Terms like [...] stepper, mack, star.

6. an ambitious man [he takes steps for self-advancement].

1927		in G. Legman Limerick (1953) 227: There was a young maid of Klepper / Went out one night with a stepper, / And now in dismay / She murmurs each day, / ‘His pee-pee was made of red-pepper!’.
1972		B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular 190: stepper someone who gets something done.
1979		‘Iceberg Slim’ Airtight Willie and Me 39: You can’t stop a stepper.

7. (US black) a prostitute [step v. (6)].

1980

E. Folb Runnin’ Down Some Lines 204: One girl name Pat — she a stepper now.