Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
footpath made through foliage, grass etc. by repeated traffic rather than laid out by design.
Etymologies
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Examples
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frindley commented on the word desire path
A term in landscape architecture used to describe a path that isn't designed but rather is worn casually away by people finding the shortest distance between two points.
http://bblinks.blogspot.com/2008/03/phrase-of-day-desire-path.html
March 31, 2008
reesetee commented on the word desire path
Interesting! So that's what all those ruts are between the shrubs outside of this office building. :-)
April 1, 2008
bilby commented on the word desire path
Wow.
April 1, 2008
kewpid commented on the word desire path
Interesting!
April 12, 2008
frindley commented on the word desire path
See also desire paths.
September 21, 2008
ellensf commented on the word desire path
From What Can a Body Do?: How We Meet the Built World by Sara Hendren (Riverhead Books, 2020):
In any sizable park or green space, you’ll likely find two kinds of paths: the formal kind, paved with brick or concrete, and the informal kind, the paths made by people walking over and over a stretch of grass, wearing away the green and carving a scruffy emergent line in its place. These are paths made by sheer repetitive use; they’re not anyone’s executive decision but arise one choice at a time, collected in aggregate. Most of us know them as friendly disobedience: they’re shortcuts, maybe, or just the most commonsense pathway from one frequented site to another. Urban planners call these paths “desire lines,” or sometimes “cow paths,” “pirate paths,” or the slightly stuffier “counter-grid trajectories.” They indicate yearning, some planners say—either to have formal paved lines where there are none or to actively carve out a different path where one had been prescribed.
October 17, 2020
ry commented on the word desire path
see also comments at nerd path
October 20, 2020