pave the road to hell en · VERB
Pronunciation
- (Australia) audio
Etymology
From the proverb the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Meanings
-
(idiomatic) To lead to a disaster by acting with good intentions.
In the other direction, treatments that were decried in their time as paving the road to hell, including vaccination, transfusions, anesthesia, artificial insemination, organ transplants, and in-vitro fertilization, have become unexceptional boons to human well-being.
2015 August 1, Steven Pinker, “The moral imperative for bioethics”, in The Boston Globe, archived from the original on 03 Dec 2015:
Forms
| Spelling | Features | Labels | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| paved the road to hell | Tense=Past, VerbForm=Part | lexicographic | |
| paved the road to hell | Tense=Past | lexicographic | |
| paving the road to hell | Tense=Pres, VerbForm=Part | lexicographic | |
| paves the road to hell | Number=Sing, Person=3, Tense=Pres | lexicographic |