the.com/stepfamily

means A family formed when a parent partners with or marries someone who becomes a parent-figure to their existing children, merging two separate households and histories into one.

from Straightforward compound of 'step-' and 'family.' That 'step-' prefix comes from Old English 'steop-', related to a root meaning 'bereaved' or 'orphaned' — it originally marked relationships created after a death, as in stepchild or stepmother, where one parent had died and another adult stepped into the gap. Over centuries the word loosened from its grim origin (death) to also cover divorce and remarriage, but it still literally means 'connected through loss,' even when the modern family itself is anything but.