Word for the day: path

path |pɑːθ|                                                                      *camino (en Español)DEFINITIONnoun ( pl. paths |pɑːðz| )a way or track laid down for walking or made by continual treading.• the course or direction in which a person or thing is moving: the missile traced a fiery path in the sky.• a course of action or way of achieving something: a chosen career path | a vegetarian diet could be the path to a longer life.• a schedule available for allocation to an individual railway train over a given route.• Computing a definition of the order in which an operating system or program searches for a file or executable program.

verb [ no obj. ] (usu. as nounpathing)
(chiefly in computing and railway contexts) allocate a path.
PHRASESthe path of least resistance.
DERIVATIVESpathless adjective
ORIGIN Old English pæth, of West Germanic origin; related to Dutch pad,German Pfad, of unknown ultimate origin.

-path |paθ|combining form1 denoting a practitioner of curative treatment: homeopath.2 denoting a person who suffers from a disease: psychopath.
ORIGIN back-formation from -pathy, or from Greek -pathēs ‘-sufferer’.

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