Pathway

How to spell pathway

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce pathway

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does pathway mean?

1. nounA track or route, especially a narrow one for walking.
2. nounA course of action or route toward a particular goal or outcome.

Pathway in a sentence

• A gravel pathway wound through the garden to the back gate.

• The apprenticeship offers a clear pathway into engineering.

• The council resurfaced the muddy pathway along the riverbank.

• The report set out a realistic pathway to lower emissions.

Where does pathway come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Pathway is a native English compound, joining two very old Germanic words that both already meant a route on foot. The first element, path, comes from the Old English pæð, meaning a track worn by walking, and it has cousins in Dutch pad and German Pfad. The second element, way, comes from the Old English weg, meaning a road or course of travel, and it shares an ancient root with the Latin via and the verb to convey. By the time pathway appears in late medieval English, it simply stacked the two near-synonyms together for emphasis, naming a narrow walked route. The modern figurative sense, a course of action or a route toward a goal, grew naturally from that literal picture, which is why we still talk about a career pathway. The spelling is reassuringly transparent: it is just the two everyday words path and way written as one, with no silent letters added or dropped.

How the word is built

• path (a track or trail, from Old English pæð)
• way (a route or road, from Old English weg)