path

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English[edit]

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Etymology[edit]

From Middle English path, peth, from Old English pæþ ‎(path, track), from Proto-Germanic *paþaz ‎(path) (compare West Frisian paad, Dutch pad, German Pfad), Greek πατέω ‎(patéo) / πάτος ‎(pátos), from Scythian (compare Avestan [script needed] ‎(panta), gen. [script needed] ‎(paθa, way), Old Persian [script needed] ‎(pathi-)), from Proto-Indo-European *pent- (compare English find). More at find.

Pronunciation[edit]

Noun[edit]

path ‎(plural paths)

  1. A trail for the use of, or worn by, pedestrians.
    • John Dryden
      The dewy paths of meadows we will tread.
    • 1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, chapter 1, in Mr. Pratt's Patients:
      I stumbled along through the young pines and huckleberry bushes. Pretty soon I struck into a sort of path that, I cal'lated, might lead to the road I was hunting for. It twisted and turned, and, the first thing I knew, made a sudden bend around a bunch of bayberry scrub and opened out into a big clear space like a lawn.
  2. A course taken.
    • 1900, Charles W. Chesnutt, The House Behind the Cedars, Chapter I,
      Just before Warwick reached Liberty Point, a young woman came down Front Street from the direction of the market-house. When their paths converged, Warwick kept on down Front Street behind her, it having been already his intention to walk in this direction.
    the path of a meteor, of a caravan, or of a storm
  3. (paganism) A Pagan tradition, for example witchcraft, Wicca, druidism, Heathenry.
  4. A metaphorical course.
  5. A method or direction of proceeding.
    • Bible, Psalms xxv. 10
      All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth.
    • Gray
      The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
  6. (computing) A human-readable specification for a location within a hierarchical or tree-like structure, such as a file system or as part of a URL
  7. (graph theory) A sequence of vertices from one vertex to another using the arcs (edges). A path does not visit the same vertex more than once (unless it is a closed path, where only the first and the last vertex are the same).
  8. (topology) A continuous map from the unit interval to a topological space .

Synonyms[edit]

Derived terms[edit]

Translations[edit]

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Verb[edit]

path ‎(third-person singular simple present paths, present participle pathing, simple past and past participle pathed)

  1. (transitive) To make a path in, or on (something), or for (someone).
    • Drayton
      pathing young Henry's unadvised ways

References[edit]

  • Oxford English Dictionary [draft revision; June 2005]

Anagrams[edit]