The physical core is to tread, to set foot. Press your foot down and three meanings grow from it. First, the surface you tread becomes the way, the road, the path, one of the most common nouns in Hebrew. Second, to tread something down is to cock a weapon and, by extension, to be tense and on alert. Third, the one who shows you where to set your feet is the guide, and what they give is guidance, training. Even the passport, דַּרְכּוֹן, is "the little way-document" that lets you travel the roads. Every word is verified against pealim, niqqud included.
The same root runs through the verb system. Each binyan is a voice: it bends the one idea into active, passive, causative or reciprocal. Tap to hear.
The nif'al here is doubly loaded: literally "to be trodden on", and figuratively "to be on edge" (think of a cocked, tensioned weapon). The causative hif'il shifts the foot-image to a person: to guide is to show another where to set their feet. Pi'el, pu'al and huf'al are not lexicalized for this root.
Same root letters, different noun moulds (mishkalim). The mould tells you the function: who does it, the act of doing it, or the thing produced.
Strip the prefixes, suffixes and vowels. Three consonants remain, and the meaning lives there.