Word.ws English Dictionary

hitting the pavement

hitting the pavement is the present participle and gerund of hit the pavement.

Meaning of hit the pavement

Verb

hit the pavement (third-person singular simple present hits the pavement, present participle hitting the pavement, simple past and past participle hit the pavement)

  1. (idiomatic) To travel on foot, as on a sidewalk.
    • But getting people to hit the pavement is more than just a health concern. . . . [M]unicipalities are looking to combat inner-city decay by keeping the streets flush with pedestrians.2007 July 31, Ceri Au, “Fighting for the Right to Flush”, in Time
  2. (idiomatic) To travel or begin to move in an automobile or other road vehicle.
    • And when we hit the pavement, we found we had covered the last 54 miles in an hour and twenty minutes.1925, "Automotive Section: "Hitting it up" (advertisement)," Ottawa Citizen, 4 July (retrieved 28 Sep 2010)

Questions about hitting the pavement

What is hitting the pavement the present participle and gerund of?
Hitting the pavement is the present participle and gerund of hit the pavement.

Words near hitting the pavement in the dictionary

  1. hitting the high notes
  2. hitting the jackpot
  3. hitting the mark
  4. hitting the nail on the head
  5. hitting the pan
  6. hitting the pavement
  7. hitting the rack
  8. hitting the road
  9. hitting the rocks
  10. hitting the roof
  11. hitting the sack

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hitting the pavement (page history and authors); hit the pavement (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “hitting the pavement.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hitting_the_pavement. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.