pathbreaking
Americanadjective
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pertaining to blazing a trail or path.
-
pioneering; innovative.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
A pathbreaking European banking merger is meanwhile gathering steam.
From Barron's • Mar. 30, 2026
Our modern understanding of mobility began with the pathbreaking work of Gary Becker and Nigel Tomes in 1979.
From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 19, 2025
Baldwin’s writing about race and American society was always entwined with love stories, from his pathbreaking 1956 LGBTQ+ novel “Giovanni’s Room” to his late classic, 1974’s “If Beale Street Could Talk.”
From Los Angeles Times • May 14, 2025
There has been no great frisson of ideas, no proud democratic exercise, no pathbreaking consensus.
From Slate • Mar. 5, 2024
Einstein’s earlier pathbreaking work on the photoelectric effect suggested strongly that light was composed of a stream of “light quanta,” or particles.
From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
