Is the phrase "step foot" a recent misuse of the phrase "set foot"?

First time poster to this forum.

I've recently started to notice a lot of people using the phrase "step foot" as a replacement for "set foot", eg.

I wouldn't step foot in that restaurant

I find this a bit jarring, and it seems like an incorrect use of the phrase "set foot" that has recently entered the zeitgeist. Am I out of touch or mistaken here? Is there a way of tracking usage of this new version of the phrase?

Solution 1:

Your assumption appears to be suggested also here:

Apparently a blending of step with set foot, perhaps by confusion.

(chiefly US) Alternative form of set foot:

An early usage is from the the beginning of the 19th century:

1813, Washington Irving, “Sketches of an Excursion from Edinburgh to Dublin”, in The Analectic magazine, page 480:

• This was a pleasure of no small kind; and in stepping foot again upon the soil of that country, which contains much that I prize, and more that I admire.

(Wiktionary)

And also the in the following extract the Washington State University confirms that step foot is a misusage of set foot:

step foot:

• When you want to say that you refuse to enter some location, the traditional expression is not “step foot,” but “set foot”: “I refuse to set foot in my brother-in-law’s house while he lets his vicious pit bull run around inside.”