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Reader question: Please explain “garden path” in this sentence: “I guess we were all led down the garden path in believing our pensions were secure.” My comments: Here, the speaker suspects they were cheated on their pension plans. To say they were led down the garden path in believing their pensions were secure is to say they were duped into believing so. But, alas, the pensions weren’t safe. Question is, why is being led down the garden path equivalent to being cheated and deceived? Take a walk up and down a traditional Chinese garden, especially a large one involving a few ponds, even lakes and man-made mountains you’ll get the idea. The garden path isn’t anything like the major streets in the inner city of Beijing, which are all straight lines going either east-west or north-south. Garden paths, on the other hand, are all small and winding. They zigzag their ways now into the woods, now round a pond and then up a mountain. Sometimes a path leads to a dead end. Sometimes a path forks into two, or three, etc and so forth. The idea behind the garden path is of course to add intrigue and mystery, while taking full advantage of the scenery. To the visitor, though, it may bring confusion – especially for the first-time visitor, who may lose his way anywhere. To many, the confusion created by the garden paths is welcome. But anyway, this is the origin of the idea of someone being led down (or up, for that matter) the garden path, meaning metaphorically that this someone has been deceived or cheated in some way or other. | 
