Word.ws English Dictionary

pave the cowpath

pave the cowpath verb: to formalize an existing de-facto practice.

Verb

pave the cowpath (third-person singular simple present paves the cowpath, present participle paving the cowpath, simple past and past participle paved the cowpath)

  1. (figuratively) To formalize an existing de-facto practice.

Forms of pave the cowpath

third-person singular presentpaves the cowpath
present participlepaving the cowpath
past participlepaved the cowpath
pastpaved the cowpath

Origin of pave the cowpath

Reflecting the theme that some paved roads of the 20th and 21st centuries were developed over existing rights of way such as earlier cowpaths and footpaths; see also Wikipedia at desire path.

Questions about pave the cowpath

What does pave the cowpath mean?
Pave the cowpath means to formalize an existing de-facto practice.
What part of speech is pave the cowpath?
Pave the cowpath is a verb.
What is the past tense of pave the cowpath?
The past tense of pave the cowpath is paved the cowpath.

Words near pave the cowpath in the dictionary

  1. pavannes
  2. Pavano
  3. pavans
  4. Pavarottian
  5. pave
  6. pave the cowpath
  7. pave the road to hell
  8. pave the way
  9. paved
  10. paved the road to hell
  11. paved the way

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pave the cowpath (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: “pave the cowpath.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pave_the_cowpath. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.