Noun

(en noun)

A promise or vow made on entering a religious order.

She died only a few years after her profession .

* 1796 , Matthew Lewis, The Monk , Folio Society 1985, p. 27:

Rosario was a young novice belonging to the monastery, who in three months intended to make his profession .

A declaration of belief, faith or of one's opinion.

Despite his continued professions of innocence, the court eventually sentenced him to five years.

An occupation, trade, craft, or activity in which one has a professed expertise in a particular area; a job, especially one requiring a high level of skill or training.

My father was a barrister by profession .

The practitioners of such an occupation collectively.

His conduct is against the established practices of the legal profession .

Noun

(en noun)

A trail for the use of, or worn by, pedestrians.

* (John Dryden)

The dewy paths of meadows we will tread.

* , chapter=1

, title= Mr. Pratt's Patients, chapter=1 , passage=I stumbled along through the young pines and huckleberry bushes. Pretty soon I struck into a sort of path that, I cal'lated, might lead to the road I was hunting for. It twisted and turned, and, the first thing I knew, made a sudden bend around a bunch of bayberry scrub and opened out into a big clear space like a lawn.}}

A course taken.

* 1900 , , , Chapter I,

Just before Warwick reached Liberty Point, a young woman came down Front Street from the direction of the market-house. When their paths converged, Warwick kept on down Front Street behind her, it having been already his intention to walk in this direction.

(paganism) A Pagan tradition, for example witchcraft, Wicca, druidism, Heathenry.

A metaphorical course.

A method or direction of proceeding.

* Bible, Psalms xxv. 10

All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth.

* Gray

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

(computing) A human-readable specification for a location within a hierarchical or tree-like structure, such as a file system or as part of a URL

(graph theory) A sequence of vertices]] from one vertex to another using the arcs ([[edge, edges). A path does not visit the same vertex more than once (unless it is a closed path , where only the first and the last vertex are the same).

(topology) A continuous map $f$ from the unit interval $I\; =\; [0,1]$ to a topological space $X$.