Trodden is the past participle of “tread,” which means to walk on or step on something. When a path has been trodden by many feet over time, it becomes packed down and visible. You might notice a trodden trail through a field where people have walked the same route so often that the grass no longer grows there.

The word often appears in phrases that reveal something about how well-traveled or explored a path is. A well-trodden path is one that many people have walked before: safe, familiar, and easy to follow. When someone takes “the road less traveled” (from Robert Frost's famous poem), they're deliberately avoiding the well-trodden routes that most people choose.

Something can also be downtrodden, which means crushed or oppressed, like grass that's been stepped on repeatedly. When describing people, downtrodden means they've been treated unfairly or kept from opportunities, as if they've been walked over and pushed down.

You might use trodden when describing a shortcut through your schoolyard that students have walked so many times that it's become a dirt path, or when talking about following someone else's footsteps versus making your own way.