Pave

How to spell pave

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce pave

What does pave mean?

1. verbTo cover a surface such as a road, path, or yard with a hard material like stone, concrete, or asphalt.

Pave in a sentence

• The council agreed to pave the muddy lane before winter.

• They hired a contractor to pave the cracked driveway.

Where does pave come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word arrived in English in the 1300s from the Old French paver, meaning 'to surface a road', which itself descended from the Latin verb pavire, meaning 'to beat, tread down, or ram firm'. The Latin sense is wonderfully concrete: early roads were made by pounding stones and earth into a hard, level bed, so to pave something literally meant to compact it solid by striking it. From the same Latin root comes the noun 'pavement', the firmly beaten surface itself. Over the centuries the word broadened from this physical act of laying stone or asphalt to the familiar figurative phrase about paving the way, meaning to make progress easier for what follows. The single vowel-consonant-e spelling is regular, which is why the long 'a' sound is heard so clearly.

How the word is built

• pave (single root, from Latin pavire: to beat down or ram firm)