Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- transitive verb To cover with a pavement.
- transitive verb To cover uniformly, as if with pavement.
- transitive verb To be or compose the pavement of.
- idiom (pave the way) To make progress or development easier.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To cover or lay with blocks of stone or wood, or with bricks, tiles, etc., regularly disposed, and set firmly in their places so as to make a hard level surface; in general, to cover with any kind of pavement: as, to
pave a street; to pave the courtyard.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb To lay or cover with stone, brick, or other material, so as to make a firm, level, or convenient surface for vehicles, horses, carriages, or persons on foot, to travel on; to floor with brick, stone, or other solid material
- transitive verb Fig.: To make smooth, easy, and safe; to prepare, as a path or way
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb UK To
cover something withpaving slabs - verb Canada, US To cover with
stone ,concrete ,blacktop or othercovering to make aroad forvehicles
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a setting with precious stones so closely set that no metal shows
- verb cover with a material such as stone or concrete to make suitable for vehicle traffic
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Often the pave is a spatter of the fallen mangos, its slippery condition of no import to the barefooted Tahitian, but to the shod a cause of sudden, strange gyrations and gestures, and of irreverence toward the Deity.
Mystic Isles of the South Seas. Frederick O'Brien 1900
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An irresistible bass line intertwined with a somewhat jazzy guitar phrase pave the way for the song's gorgeously arranged vocals.
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An irresistible bass line intertwined with a somewhat jazzy guitar phrase pave the way for the song's gorgeously arranged vocals.
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An irresistible bass line intertwined with a somewhat jazzy guitar phrase pave the way for the song's gorgeously arranged vocals.
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An irresistible bass line intertwined with a somewhat jazzy guitar phrase pave the way for the song's gorgeously arranged vocals.
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An irresistible bass line intertwined with a somewhat jazzy guitar phrase pave the way for the song's gorgeously arranged vocals.
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And I knew that in order for me to succeed with music, I would have to really do something different and almost kind of pave my own path.
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So in stead I kind of expected the English word to be the same as the Norwegian, namely "pave".
Language problems. magnio 2005
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COLLINS: But Ellen DeGeneres, didn't she kind of pave the way for that?
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COLLINS: But Ellen DeGeneres, didn't she kind of pave the way for that?
davidreik commented on the word pave
I notice that many of the examples are for the unusual noun form of "pave." I exchanged e-mail messages with poet Robert Haas about the noun form of "pave." Haas recently said, on the NPR program "Fresh Air," that only Walt Whitman used "pave" as a noun --- the phrase "blab of the pave" appears in "Leaves of Grass." I cited the Thackery quote from sometime before 1850.
David Reik, West Hartford, CT
May 3, 2010