to pave the cowpath
- idiom
:
formalizar lo informal
- The company decided to pave the cowpath by making official what employees were already doing informally.
Examples
-
We shouldn't just pave the cowpath when updating our software; let's consider new workflows.
-
Rather than paving the cowpath, the committee proposed a more innovative solution to the outdated process.
-
Don't pave the cowpath!
-
The committee decided to pave the cowpath with new regulations.
-
The organization chose to pave the cowpath by officializing the current practices of remote work.
-
Instead of improving their service, they just paved the cowpath by standardizing existing procedures.
-
In an effort to streamline operations, the team decided to pave the cowpath instead of implementing more effective solutions.
Antonyms
How Formalized
- Formal
1
8.0
- US
16
7.1
- US
83
4.2
Surface Forms
Morphology
pave + the + cowpath
The metaphor is directly built from 'pave' (to lay a hard surface) + 'cowpath' (an informal track made by cows), so a learner who recognises those constituents can infer the idea of formalising an ad‑hoc route or practice. However, the usage relies on a metaphorical mapping and some cultural imagery (knowing what a cowpath evokes), so the relation is not fully literal or universally transparent to a B1 learner without exposure.
Etymology
The idiom pave the cowpath may come from a simple image: cows walking across a field make a worn dirt track called a cowpath, and people later cover that track with stones or pavement to pave it instead of building a new road. So pave the cowpath means to make an informal way 'official' or to keep an old habit without really improving it.