Definition
To pave, in legal usage, means to cover a surface — a street, sidewalk, alley, or public way — with stone, brick, asphalt, concrete, or other substantial material so as to create a firm, level, and convenient surface for travel by persons, horses, or vehicles. The term arises most commonly in municipal law, public works law, and special assessment proceedings, where the act of paving triggers legal obligations, authorizes the levy of improvement costs against adjacent landowners, or defines the scope of a public contractor's duty.
The definition is functional, not material: courts have consistently held that the requirement to "pave" is satisfied by any durable, level covering appropriate to the purpose, whether stone, brick, flagging, asphalt, or concrete. The laying of a crosswalk, the flagging of a sidewalk, and the asphalting of a roadway have all been treated as paving within this meaning.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To cover something with paving slabs; to cover with stone, concrete, blacktop, or other solid material, especially to aid travel; also used idiomatically as "to pave the way for."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "The pavement." (The 1913 entry is minimal; the noun form — pavement — was the dominant common usage of the period.)
The gap between common and legal meaning here is narrow but precise. In ordinary usage, "pave" is understood loosely by material or appearance. In legal contexts — particularly special assessment and municipal improvement law — whether a surface has been "paved" within the meaning of an ordinance or contract is a question of functional adequacy, not material choice. A flagged sidewalk is paved; a graded but uncovered surface is not. This distinction has been litigated.
Common Confusion
"Pave" should not be confused with "grade," "improve," or "repair" as these terms appear in public works contracts and municipal ordinances. Grading prepares a surface; paving covers it. An improvement contract requiring paving is not satisfied by grading alone. Similarly, "repaving" may carry different notice, assessment, or contractor-duty implications than initial paving under some municipal codes.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encounter PAVE primarily in three contexts: (1) special assessment litigation, where the question is whether a municipality's paving work justifies levying costs against abutting property owners; (2) municipal contract disputes, where the scope of a paving obligation is contested; and (3) ordinance interpretation cases, where the term appears in public way maintenance or dedication statutes.
The key research trap is assuming the term has a uniform material meaning. Courts across the relevant period — from the 1870s through the early twentieth century — consistently rejected material-specific definitions in favor of a purpose-based standard. A researcher relying only on a dictionary definition without tracing the case law will miss this functional interpretation.
Jurisdictional variation matters here: state enabling statutes for municipal paving assessments use "pave" in ways that courts have interpreted both broadly and narrowly depending on the assessment scheme at issue. Missouri and Pennsylvania cases in the historical record illustrate divergent applications.
The Anderson's entry returned for this term (paterfamilias) is unresponsive — a retrieval error in the source material, not a legal connection. Researchers should treat Anderson's as silent on this term.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (1st and 2nd editions) and Bouvier's are in close agreement on the core definition, all citing In re Phillips, 60 N.Y. 22, for the proposition that a sidewalk is paved whether covered with flat stones or brick. Bouvier's adds the Missouri authority (110 Mo. 502) for the extension of the definition to asphalt and concrete — reflecting the technological expansion of paving materials in the late nineteenth century. Both Black's editions also cite Buell v. Ball, 20 Iowa 282, and Harrisburg v. Segelbaum, 151 Pa. 172, grounding the definition in a multi-jurisdictional line of cases rather than a single authority.
What the historical dictionaries do not address: the interaction between paving definitions and special assessment enabling statutes, the question of what constitutes adequate paving for purposes of municipal acceptance of a contractor's work, and the modern administrative law dimensions of public works procurement. Researchers working in those areas must look beyond the dictionary entries to statutory and regulatory sources.
Jurisdictional Note
Municipal paving law is largely state-statutory. Whether a paving assessment is valid, how "paving" is defined for assessment purposes, and what notice abutting owners must receive varies significantly by state enabling legislation. Historical cases from New York, Iowa, Pennsylvania, and Missouri illustrate the range. Researchers should identify the governing state statute before treating any common-law definition as controlling.