pathyoudaoicibaDictYouDict[path 词源字典]
path: [OE] Path is a West Germanic word of uncertain ultimate origin. Its cousins German pfad and Dutch pad point back to a prehistoric West Germanic ancestor *patha, but no one is too sure where this came from (one possibility is that it was borrowed somehow from Greek pátos ‘path’). The verb pad ‘tread, walk’ and the -pad of footpad come from the same source.
=> pad[path etymology, path origin, 英语词源]
path (n.)youdaoicibaDictYouDict
Old English paþ, pæþ "path, track," from West Germanic *patha- (cognates: Old Frisian path, Middle Dutch pat, Dutch pad, Old High German pfad, German Pfad "path"), of uncertain origin. The original initial -p- in a Germanic word is an etymological puzzle. Don Ringe ("From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic," Oxford 2006) describes it as "An obvious loan from Iranian ..., clearly borrowed after Grimm’s Law had run its course." Watkins says the word is "probably borrowed (? via Scythian) from Iranian *path-," from PIE root *pent- "to tread, go, pass" (source of Avestan patha "way;" see find (v.)), but this is too much of a stretch for OED and others. In Scotland and Northern England, commonly a steep ascent of a hill or in a road.