path
Definitions
General Science
- noun a way from one place to another, especially one travelled on foot
- noun a way to achieve something
Aviation
Computing
- noun a possible route or sequence of events or instructions within the execution of a program
- noun a route from one point in a communications network to another
- noun a list of subdirectories in which the operating system should look for a named file
Electronics
- The route along which something travels. For instance, current, data, beams, crafts, and so on.
- The route along which a current travels. For example, the course of the flow of current through a circuit.
- In a printed circuit, the conductive strips, foils, pads, segments, or the like, via which a current flows.
- The route along which an electromagnetic wave travels, such as that between a transmitter and receiver.
- In a network, a route between two nodes. There may be more than one route between two specific nodes, and each path consists of one or more branches.
- In computers, a sequence of instructions followed within a routine.
- In database management, the route between data or sets of data. For instance, the logical connections between two records.
Information & Library Science
- noun a particular course of action
Medical
- prefix (written as path-)referring to disease
Military
- noun a small track, which has been made artificially, or simply by people walking along it over a long period
- noun a line along which something travels
Travel
- noun a narrow way for walking, cycling or riding
Health Economics
- acronym forProgram for Assessment of Technology in Health (written as PATH)
- This research unit performs economic evaluations and health technology assessments mainly for the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care in Ontario, Canada. It is a part of the Centre for Evaluation of Medicines at McMaster University.
Origin & History of “path”
Path is a west Germanic word of uncertain ultimate origin. Its cousins German pfad and Dutch pad point back to a prehistoric West Germanic ancestor *patha, but no one is too sure where this came from (one possibility is that it was borrowed somehow from Greek pátos ‘path’). The verb pad ‘tread, walk’ and the -pad of footpad come from the same source.
