Other forms: treads, treading, trod, trodden, treaded
To tread is to put your foot down — to step, and to press with your weight as you do it. Treading on a plug in bare feet, treading mud through the hall, treading grapes in a barrel.
It is a slightly old-fashioned word for plain walking, so most of its daily life is in warnings and set phrases: tread carefully, tread lightly, and tread on someone's toes, which means to annoy them by moving into their business. The noun tread is what your foot meets or leaves behind: the grooved rubber pattern on a tyre or a shoe, and the flat part of a stair you actually stand on. Tread water means to stay upright and afloat by moving your legs, and away from swimming pools it means to be busy without getting anywhere. The past forms are irregular and catch people out: trod and trodden, as in a well trodden path. You tread on things, and you tread a path.
1verbtreadTo walk, or to put your foot down on something and press.
“Mind where you tread — the boards are rotten near the window.”
2nounraisedThe raised pattern of grooves on a tyre or on the sole of a shoe.
“The tread on these front tyres is nearly gone.”
3nounflatThe flat part of a step, the part you put your foot on.
“Each stair tread was worn into a hollow in the middle.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
Tread comes straight down the Germanic line: Middle English treden, Old English tredan, Proto-West Germanic tredan, Proto-Germanic trudaną. It never took the detour through Latin or French, which is why it feels so short and old — the same blunt word for putting one foot down, handed along for well over a thousand years.
Proto-Germanic
*trudaną
Proto-West Germanic
*tredan
Old English
tredan
Middle English
treden
English, today
tread
From Middle English treden, from Old English tredan, from Proto-West Germanic tredan, from Proto-Germanic trudaną.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA