Other forms: trampled, trampling, tramples
To trample is to walk heavily over something and crush it. Trample the flowers, trampled underfoot, trampled to death.
The damage is what the word names: trampling is not walking, it is walking that ruins. Crowd crushes are the serious version, and the word is used in reporting them, though crush is the more accurate term for what actually kills. Figuratively, to trample on somebody's rights is to disregard them entirely. Note that trample is tramp plus the -le of repeated action.
1verbtrampleTo walk heavily over something and crush it.
“The cows broke through the fence and trampled the vegetable garden.”
2verbdisregardTo disregard rights entirely.
“The new law tramples on the rights of workers to go on strike.”
trample is a crushing underfoot.
Middle English tramplen is tramp plus -le, the ending for repeated action. Dutch trampelen and German trampeln are built identically.
Middle English
tramplen
English, today
trample
Built from
From Middle English tramplen, trampelen (“to walk heavily”), equivalent to tramp + le. Cognate with stq trampelje (“to trample”), Dutch trampelen (“to trample”), German Low German trampeln (“to trample”), German trampeln (“to trample”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA