People walking between the bus stop (outside the picture) and the building (on the right) don’t like taking the long route around this huge green circle. It was pretty obvious that this would happen sooner or later.
this post was submitted on 28 May 2025
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Desire Paths
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Desire paths Desire paths can be paths created as a consequence of erosion caused by human or animal foot-fall or traffic. The paths usually represent the shortest or most easily navigated routes between origins and destinations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desire_path
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Because it comes from "paths of desire", I think. Sort of like "beauty mark" is not "beautifying mark": because it comes from "mark of beauty".
I believe you, it just sounds strange.
You get used to human.
English is a strange language 🤷
That I can agree with fully.
In Dutch we call it "elephant's path" (loosely translated of course). And I think that's beautiful.
For some reason I now have Colonel Hathi's March from The Jungle Book playing in my head :D
I sort of like the strangeness, because it makes the concept feel stickier in my brain; I read "desire path" and my brain stumbles on the odd grammar and I spend longer on that concept than I would have done. It makes it feel like the noun-phrase exists as greater than the sum of the two words that make it up.