Path

How to spell path

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce path

What does path mean?

1. nounA track or route along which someone or something moves, whether physical or figurative.

Path in a sentence

• The garden path led straight to the back gate.

• Choosing a new career path meant retraining for two years.

Where does path come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Path comes from the Old English pæð, meaning a track or way trodden by people or animals on foot. It belongs to a West Germanic family that also gave Dutch 'pad' and German 'Pfad', all carrying the sense of a beaten route across open ground. The deeper origins are slightly uncertain, and some scholars suspect an early borrowing into Germanic from an Iranian root linked to the Persian 'path' for way, though this connection is debated. From the literal foot-track, the word broadened over centuries to cover figurative routes such as a career path or a chosen way of life. The spelling has stayed remarkably stable, since it is short and follows the regular consonant-vowel-consonant pattern, which is why it rarely troubles writers.

How the word is built

• path (single root from Old English pæð, a track or way)