Meaning of "as ... as any ... someone had ever done"


Recently I have been reading "The Lost Symbol" and there is a sentence I find hard to understand.



The wooden stair descending to the Capitol's subbasement were as steep and shallow as any stairs Langdon had ever traversed.



From the context, it sounds Langdon has never traversed a stair as steep as this one, but the sentence itself seems to be saying that Langdon always traverses stairs as steep as these.


What does the author mean here?



Answer



Your first interpretation is almost right. It means he'd never traversed stairs steeper than these. (It's odd, however, to speak of 'traversing' stairs.)


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