# path

Pronunciation: US say "PATH" /pæθ/; UK say "PAHTH" /pɑːθ/

## Noun

1. A trail or track made for, or worn by, people traveling on foot.
   - Simple: A narrow track that people walk along on foot.
   - _The narrow path wound between the fields toward the river._
   - _Years of foot traffic had worn a path across the meadow._
2. A course of action, conduct, or development, especially one followed through life or chosen in order to reach a goal.
   - Simple: The way someone's life or actions go, or a way of doing things that someone chooses to reach a goal.
   - _Her path through grief led eventually to a kind of peace._
   - _After years of doubt, he felt his career was finally on the right path._
3. The route that someone or something follows in moving from one place to another.
   - Simple: The way something moves or travels from one place to another.
   - _The storm's path took it straight toward the coast._
   - _Scientists mapped the comet's path as it swung close to the sun._
4. A human-readable string that specifies a location within a hierarchical structure, such as a file system or a URL.
   - Simple: The written address that shows where a file or page is stored on a computer.
   - _The error message showed the full path to the missing configuration file._
   - _Each URL path points to a specific page on the website._
5. A sequence of vertices joined by edges in which no vertex repeats, unless the route is closed and shares only its first and last vertex.
   - Simple: A line through a network that joins points one after another, without going through any point twice.
   - _The algorithm searches for the shortest path between two nodes in the network._
   - _A closed path in the graph forms a cycle that returns to its starting vertex._
6. The study of the nature and causes of disease, treated as a field of medicine; pathology. *(colloquial)* (pronounced: say "PATH" /pæθ/)
   - Simple: The medical study of diseases and how they harm the body.
   - _The biopsy results came back from path within a week._
   - _She chose path because she enjoyed studying tissue samples more than seeing patients._

## Other meanings

- (verb) To create a track or route through, over, or for the use of someone.
- (noun) A particular Pagan tradition or spiritual practice, such as witchcraft, Wicca, druidism, or Heathenry.
- (verb) To navigate through the directory tree of a file system to reach a file or folder.
- (verb) To compute and follow a route through a game environment, as a character or unit does when moving toward a goal.
- (noun) A continuous function from the unit interval [0,1] into a topological space.
- (noun) A scheduling slot allocated to a train for traveling a given route, fitted between the slots of other services.

## Origin

From Middle English "path," from Old English "pæþ" ("path, track"), going back to Proto-Germanic "*paþaz." This Germanic word was possibly borrowed from an Iranian source (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European "*pent-," "to pass"), though this is disputed. It is related to Dutch "pad" and German "Pfad."

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/path (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).