Separated by a Common Language

My own sense of BrE is that 'hike' is not uncommon in its literal sense, but usually means a pretty long or challenging walk. So it sounds odd to me when US friends describe a walk on the Downs as a hike, though it would strike me as quite natural to describe going up a Lake District fell or Scottish mountain. Not at all scientific, though.

I remember coming across "Permissive footpath" for the first time, probably not long after I moved to Guildford about 25 years ago. I'd never come across is on country walks before. And as I grew up in the sixties with its talk of the permissive society, it amused me, too.

Your younger readers may not know about the "permissive society", or the awful warnings about "permissiveness" in the 60s. I associate the concept particularly with Mary Whitehouse, who protested about any allusion to sexual activity in the broadcast media. The objection was to society "permitting" things that ought to be forbidden.

I would agree with Michael. If I'm wearing boots and carrying a rucksack it's a hike, otherwise a walk.

Does anyone know when the phrase 'permissive footpath' first appeared? I used to go hiking on/at weekends when I was at the Univ of Sussex from 1978 to 1981, but I don't remember seeing such signs back then. Then I left the UK in 1983.

When in England it sounded to this US person as "poooblick foootpawth"

I’m surprised to hear that New Zealand has trails; I would call that sort of thing a track or walking track, especially in proper nouns like the Heaphy Track or Milford Track. Such tracks are used for tramping or hiking, while shorter ones that don’t need special equipment would be for walking. I’m not aware of a distinction like a permissive footpath, though a lot of walks and tracks cross farmland, and might have signs closing the track or asking trampers to take extra care during lambing. (Such tracks might be in the wop-wops, the back of beyond, or the middle of nowhere.)

Meanwhile, a footpath in NZ is the same thing as a sidewalk or pavement.

I'm surprised to hear you say that hike has "only ever been a dialect word in the UK". At least one place I have definitely come across the word is in a children's book called "The Ragtail Patrol", about Girl Guides, published in 1948. I don't have a copy to hand, but I clearly remember the line "We're going for a hike, not an amble". There is also the Enid Blyton book "Five on a Hike Together" (1951), although that encompasses a few days, not just a single walk in the country. But in neither place did the word strike me (Australian child of the 1970s) as unusual, which suggests it may have been a relatively common term in mid-20th-century British children's books.

Here in Australia, we would say "bushwalk". And I would tend to say "path", or maybe "track" rather then "footpath" or "trail" if I'm talking about an unpaved path through the bush - to me, "footpath" difinitely implies urban placement. But then I'm not a bushwalker, so can't really be relied upon for correct terminology.

We do talk about the Kokoda Track, or Kokoda Trail, a key location for Australian soldiers in New Guinea during the Second World War. There is an article at https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/blog/the-kokoda-track-or-trail looking at the arguments as to which term is preferred, including an examination of recorded usage in the day.

Like Michael Morris (and being British), I think that "a hike" means something more adventurous than "a walk". However, I always say I'm walking, even when "hiking" might be justified. I became much fonder of the word "hike" after reading the excellent "Sheep Take a Hike" by Nancy Shaw and Margot Apple.

For me, "rambling" does have connotations of organised walking groups, and suggests a gentle enjoyment of the countryside rather than an attempt to see how many muddy kilometres can be covered in a day. It feels a little old-fashioned. (But that's an outsider's view - I've never set out to go rambling.)

Permissive paths are relatively recent, and their point is that the permission can be rescinded by the landowner, whereas the more common rights of way (which are also usually on privately-owned land) give a statutory right of access. (In Scotland, permissive paths aren't generally needed, as walkers have much stronger rights of access in general.) Rights of way are either footpaths or bridleways; the latter can be used by horse riders, as you'd expect, and also by cyclists.

I only encountered "Scotland's Great Trails" recently, and it seemed a slightly embarrassing and grandiose bit of labeling. But then, they are absolutely superb.

Hike sounds like hard work. I prefer to walk. Here people may go hiking, but they probably don't hike. It has already been mentioned, but in New Zealand they go tramping in the forest. I would guess it has a Scottish origin.

The OED entry is from 1914, so it can't be taken as a guide to current usage, particularly in the colonies. It seems to me that the sense you quote (9a) is an easy semantic shift from 8a, "The track or other indication, as scent, left by a person or animal, esp. as followed by a huntsman or hound, or by any pursuer." The citations for this sense include false trail in Hamlet and stale trail in 1887 (fairly close to the date of publication).

There are places in NYC where the sidewalk has a small metal sign embedded in it saying "Property of So-and-so. Revocable permission to cross." This is clearly the same idea; it usually appears where the building is supported on columns and there is open space beneath it.

Private land in the U.S. is basically "No Trespassing" except where marked otherwise, but this is somewhat offset by the 40% of the land area that is public land (either federal or state owned), which is in general open for all recreational purposes (hiking, hunting, fishing, swimming, boating, etc.) that do not interfere with its other purposes. Alaska in the North and Nevada in the West are about 95% public land, whereas 18 states are less than 10%. However, much of it is leased for such purposes as grazing, forestry, oil and gas drilling, and mining for coal and minerals; in the West it's common for a landowner to have a small piece of private land and a large lease of adjacent public land. In addition, the foreshore, the area between high and low tide mark, is public property in the U.S., England, and Scotland, but not in Shetland (at least according to the Shetlanders, who hold that Norse law is preserved in this respect).

Hike is the Northern variant of Southern hitch 'pull with a jerk'. I can hitch up my pants (trousers) or hitch my belt; is that still current across the Pond?

BrE (Scot). I hear the word “trail” used to refer to short pieces of video/film used to advertise a film or tv programme (sorry, still can’t say “show”). However, I would be more likely to use “trailer” in this context. Having followed the link above to the post on “walking sticks”, at least one response talks about “trekking”. Incidentally, following one of the other links (I think back to 2013), David Crosbie used the term “herd immunity” rather whimsically.

It looks like in 'path and pathway' that 'to to through' is a typo.

Although "permissive footpath" is a new phrase to me, it goes back to the nineteenth century. It's found from 1846 in England, and the phrase also appears in an 1882 court case in Pennsylvania.

AFAIK "hitchhiking" is the usual name for hitchhiking throughout the Anglosphere; some BrE probably hyphenate it. Dunno about relative frequency of "hitching" with out the "hike".

In Ireland:
* The most common form of rural walking/hiking is called "hillwalking". Lowland off-road public rights-of-way are scarce. The right-to-roam lobby is much weaker than the private-property/farmers' lobby.
* A sidewalk/pavement is simply called a "footpath" (as are other types of footpath).
* The most common word in proper names of marked trails is "Way" [e.g. "Dingle Way, Wicklow Way"]

Lynne refers in the piece to "...a dirt path through a wooded area..."
I don't know if this is an AmE v BrE difference or not, but that use of the word 'dirt' sounds odd to my Southern English ears.
To me, 'dirt' can only refer to out-of-place substances whose presence makes something 'dirty'.
Soft ground isn't made of 'dirt' - it's made of 'soil' (or, if wet, 'mud')... but I can't refer to a *'soil path'.
In fact, strangely, my ideolect seems to lack any term for what Lynne calls a 'dirt path', other than 'unpaved'... which is rather unsatisfactory, as it says what it isn't, rather than what it is!
My father, who grew up in Millom in the North-West of England, did have such a term, however, and a rather evocative one: to him, an unpaved track was 'a mucky lonnin'.

One thing that has become quite popular in many American cities and towns are "greenways", which can be paved, gravel, or dirt. They are specifically built for recreational walking, jogging, biking, etc.

We have a village war over a permissive footpath, and my understanding of it is this: It's available to the public at the will of the landowner, and that can be withdrawn at any time. The reason for the local war is that many people believe that the landowner wants to divert people onto the permissive path, let the public footpath go unused (it's closer to their house and annoys them), and then ask to have it closed because it's not used. At which point, they could withdraw their permission to use the path they've been diverting people onto.

This was an interesting post. As someone involved in recording footpaths and bridleways in England and Wales (E&W) (the law is different in Scotland and Northern Ireland) I noted several points.
(1) Public footpaths often run across privately-owned land in E&W. The word 'public' here indicates that it is a public right of footpath (i.e. to pass and repass on foot). In E&W law, the term 'footpath' refers to the right not to the physical track.
(2) A permissive footpath (which I hadn't associated with the 'permissive society' before, but will be sure to make a joke out of it now) relates to the fact that the landowner can withdraw his permission to use the route (a noted in Ellen Hawley's comment) - it is a permission (hence 'permissive') rather than a right.
(3) The strip by the side of a carriageway that is (mainly) for walkers (i.e. the (UK) pavement or (US) sidewalk) is never a 'footpath'. Instead it is a 'footway', although the public seem to use the two interchangeably.
(4) We have regional and temporal variations - look for Foot Roads and Bridle Roads on old maps and in some parts of the country.

Thank you! Having lived in Cumbria for a while (as a language assistant), and now meddling with so many American friends, I am often at a loss as to which term is really the British one.
Plus I also have many Nordic friends -- who speak American English...!
Thank you also for the comments, everybody!

I like walking up the biggest hills/mountains Scotland has to offer. I don't ramble, and I don't really use hike, either, although I suspect others might use it of the sort of walking I do. To me, a path is usually narrow, while a track is wider (often a Land Rover track in the Scottish Highlands).
There is a "Scottish Rights of Way Society" (now called ScotWays) - there are Rights of Way in Scotland, it is just that the law is quite different here.

In AmE, I've always associated hiking with distance rather than difficulty. For example, we have rail trails (walking and bicycling trails on former railroad rights of way). Being former railroads, they have easy gradients, so they are never difficult to walk on, but if I go for a 5- or 10-mile walk on one, I call it a hike. When I was a Boy Scout (1960s), the shortest walk we ever formally called a hike was five miles, and that became my personal standard: anything shorter is a walk but not a hike.

I once saw a highway sign in the US that read something like "Only permitted trucks allowed." This struck me as being a bizarre oxymoron, meaning something like "only the trucks that are allowed on the road are allowed." I eventually figured out that it meant "Only trucks with a permit are allowed." But since "permitted" refers much more often to receiving permission of some kind rather than a bureaucratic permit, this took some effort.

Late to this. As a former local councillor in England I can tell you that those whom the whips wish to drive mad they put on the statutory Public Rights of Way (PROW) Committee. PROW law goes back centuries and is a legal labyrinth worthy of a latter-day Minotaur. Public rights of way that have been established for centuries can indeed cross private land, and the landowner has a statutory duty to keep them well-maintained, although some are more diligent about this than others and the law is difficult to enforce. Some urban PROWs are muddy snickets/ginnels/tenfoots/alleys running between the backs of houses, full uf used condoms and discarded sharps and a handy escape route for Burglar Bill (have you done burgle/burglarize yet?). Neighbours and local authorities would love to extinguish these but since some numpty is bound to object it ends up in a legal nightmare.

The thing is, whenever it can be shown that a path has been customarily used continuously without let or hindrance for 20 years, that path becomes a public right of way. Landowners are, not surprisingly, reluctant to let this happen so they declare such a route to be a permissive path, and will typically arrange for it to be closed for one day a year, often Christmas Day, to break the continous use.

I was careful to say that all this applies to England. In Scotland there are footpaths but no public rights of way because in Scotland we have complete freedom to roam over private land unless specifically prohibited. Some American owners of golf courses have struggled to get their heads round this.