I wonder about the meaning of TO HIT in this kind of context,
Follow this footpath and you’ll eventually hit the road.
There is also a song which goes as follows
hit the road, Jack ...
Can anyone help me grasp the meaning of TO HIT in these specific context?
The first hit means to encounter, to come across:
hit
verb (used with object), hit, hitting.
- to come or light upon; meet with; find: to hit the right road.
(Dictionary.com)
If you follow that footpath, you will eventually find the road.
I would say the second one is part of an idiom: hit the road. In that context, the speaker is commanding Jack to leave, to go away. However, in a different context, it can simply mean to begin a journey.
- hit the road
to leave; go away
to start or resume travelling
(Collins Dictionary)- hit the road
Fig. to depart; to begin one's journey, especially on a road trip; to leave for home. It's time to hit the road. I'll see you. We have to hit the road very early in the morning.
(TFD)
The second definition in merriam webster gives
to cause to come into contact
The word is so short, it subsumes multiple meanings depending on context.
to discover or meet especially by chance
This seems to fit finding the right road.
To deliver a blow
This seems to fit with the song, as a powerful, aversive connotation is implied, as if Jack is let falling down to hit (his head on) the road. But its not quite as strong, I hope - maybe Jack will meet someone by chance anew, but the song doesn't care.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hit
Also, to hit the road is an idiom that means, to leave.
to go on the road would have a different meaning, to travel, so a different idiom is needed.
Hit has a base sense of violent contact, but is used figuratively to express any strong or emphatic contact.
The hit in
Head on over yonder and y'all'll hit the road sooner or later.
is reach or meet, just sexed up a little. It's worth noting that Americans will associate this expression with places that don't have paved roads (i.e., the sticks) and, sometimes, with the people who live there (yokels). It's a bog standard sense of the verb, though. (Sense II.11.ff. at the OED, which notes its odd history: the reach or meet sense of hit was the word's standard sense in Old Norse but mostly disappeared in English only to reappear in colloquial American speech.)
Similarly, to go or to set out on a journey was the base sense of strike, one of hit's primary synonyms. The hit in
Hit the road, bub.
has a long history into Old English as strike out upon and means step briskly, not so much that one needs to be running but that one moves sharply and emphatically away from this place.
It may feel a little odd even to a native speaker (notice the answers that only want to treat hit the road as a pat phrase) since modern English tends to use hit for blows from a fist or hand-held tool and uses kick for strikes from one's feet. It's part-and-parcel of the actual English term, though, back to Old Norse and Old English, revived by an American tendency to indulge in stronger and more violent means of expression.
