Noun

(-)

English plurals

(plural only) The timbers of shipyard stocks that slope into the water and along which a ship or large boat is launched.

* {{quote-book

, year=1912 , year_published= , edition= , editor= , author=Fredrick A. Talbot , title=Steamship Conquest of the World , chapter= citation , genre= , publisher= , isbn= , page=36 , passage= By the time the Mauretania was ready for launching a total weight of 16,800 tons was standing in the berth, and this represented the heaviest weight that had ever been sent down the ways up to that time. }}

(plural only) The longitudinal guiding surfaces on the bed of a planer, lathe, etc. along which a table or carriage moves.

(informal) A distance.

* 2007, Aryn Kyle, The God of Animals , Simon and Schuster, ISBN 1416533249, page 41,

“We still have a ways to go with patterns.”

“You still have a ways to go with everything,” I told him.

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 $X$.