To trample means to step heavily on something, crushing or damaging it with your feet. When a herd of elephants tramples through tall grass, they flatten everything beneath their massive weight. When an excited crowd tramples toward the exit after a concert, people might get knocked down and stepped on.

You can trample things accidentally or on purpose. A careless hiker might trample delicate wildflowers without noticing them. An angry person might deliberately trample someone's artwork to destroy it.

The word carries a sense of disregard and damage. When something gets trampled, it doesn't just get touched: it gets crushed, flattened, or ruined. A garden trampled by deer looks destroyed. Papers trampled in a hallway become dirty and torn.

People also use trample figuratively to describe treating someone's rights or feelings with similar carelessness. If a bully tramples your ideas in a group project, they're crushing your contributions as thoughtlessly as boots crushing grass. When someone says their rights were trampled, they mean those rights were ignored or violated without respect.

The related phrase trample on emphasizes this disrespect: to trample on someone's feelings means to hurt them carelessly, showing no concern for the damage you're causing.