pavement

American  

[peyv-muhnt] / ˈpeɪv mənt /

noun

1. a paved road, highway, etc.

2. a paved surface, ground covering, or floor.

3. a material used for paving.

4. Atlantic States and British. sidewalk.

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idioms

1. pound the pavement, to walk the streets in order to accomplish something.

   If you're going to find work you'd better start pounding the pavement.

pavement British  

/ ˈpeɪvmənt /

noun

1. US and Canadian word: sidewalk.  a hard-surfaced path for pedestrians alongside and a little higher than a road

2. a paved surface, esp one that is a thoroughfare

3. the material used in paving

4. civil engineering the hard layered structure that forms a road carriageway, airfield runway, vehicle park, or other paved areas

5. geology a level area of exposed rock resembling a paved road See limestone pavement

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pavement More Idioms  

1. see pound the pavement.

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Other Word Forms

• pavemental
  adjective
• prepavement
  noun
• subpavement
  noun

Etymology

Origin of pavement

1250–1300; Middle English < Old French < Latin pavīmentum. See pave, -ment

Explanation

Pavement is a hard surface that's covered in concrete or asphalt, like a road or a driveway. If you wipe out on your bike and land on the pavement, you may end up with skinned knees or scraped elbows. When pavement is newly surfaced or patched, it's smooth and even — but after a long, cold winter pavement is often full of potholes and cracks. In the US, pavement most often refers to a road or street, but it can also mean any paved surface, like a sidewalk or paved area in a park. The word has a Latin root, pavimentum, "level surface that's been beaten firm."

Example Sentences

Police effectively asked Google to look through a vast archive of human movement and identify which lives intersected with a particular patch of pavement at a particular moment in time.

From Slate • May 20, 2026

At 00:06, a member of the public came on to Newchurch Road and saw Harden lying on the pavement and Matabiswana's friend kneeling next to him with his head in her hands.

From BBC • May 18, 2026

Put your hand on the pavement for seven seconds, they say — “if it burns you, it burns them.”

From Los Angeles Times • May 8, 2026

Another clip, filmed from a car driving north along Golders Green Road, shows the suspect chasing after a man on the pavement.

From BBC • Apr. 29, 2026

When water started pouring from the front of the car onto the pavement, creating a buzzing puddle inches away from our feet, I knew we were doomed.

From "Summer of the Mariposas" by Guadalupe García McCall

Related Words

• asphalt
• road
• sidewalk