Stepping-stone synonyms

Ethel took one glance at Dean's occupation and knew she had hit neither a financial bonanza nor a stepping-stone to anything but fiscal mediocrity.

Thus they make Mer y a sort of watch tower over the entrance into Afghanistan on the north-west and at the same time create a stepping-stone or etape between north-east Persia and the states of Bokhara and Samarkand.

Through the influence of Samuel Wilberforce, he was offered the post of sub-almoner to Queen Victoria, always recognized as a stepping-stone to the episcopal bench, and his refusal of it was honourably consonant with all else in his career as an Anglican dignitary, in which he united pastoral diligence with an asceticism that was then quite exceptional.

Lamb, The Dynamical Theory of Sound (1910), is intended as a stepping-stone to the study of-the writings of Helmholtz and Rayleigh.