a step: one reach of the leg in walking, and so the stride itself or the whole course a person's walking takes
This is the ordinary Hebrew word for a step, the ground a person covers in one movement of the leg. At its plainest it can be counted off as a measure of distance, as when the men carrying the ark walked six paces and stopped to sacrifice.
Most of its uses describe the quality of someone's walking rather than a distance. A wide step is the picture of strength and safety: God "enlarges" the king's step beneath him so that his ankles never turn. A cramped step is the picture of trouble closing in, as when a confident man discovers that his own powerful strides have been hemmed in. The image works because walking freely, without stumbling or being penned in, was the plainest everyday sign that life was going well.
From there the word stretches to stand for a life as a whole. A person's steps are the record of where they have actually gone, and Job comes back to the thought again and again: God counts his steps, sees every one of them, and Job says he is ready to give the tally himself. The wisdom sayings turn the same picture forward instead of backward. A person plans the route in his own mind, but the actual step taken is settled by God, not by the planner.
What holds these uses together is that in Hebrew a person's steps are never merely physical. The same word that measures six paces of ground can measure a life, which is why it so often sits right next to דֶּרֶךְ, the word for the road or the whole direction someone is travelling. Steps are what a road is made of.