[earthboundkid]

The word dao literally means “road” but by the time of the DDJ, it had come to mean “way of doing something” and “speech that explains how to do something”. Interestingly, in Greek “method” is meta + hodos and hodos means “road” so it’s an etymologically appropriate translation.

[taoxin]

道 (dao) means "the way of doing thing" in modern-day Chinese as well. For instance, 王道 means the "the way of governing". 路 is more common for the literal meaning of "road", though 道 has a meaning of both "road" and "waterway" as well.