US, Ambitransitive To tread heavily, especially to crush underfoot.
Mother yelled at my brothers for tromping through her flowerbed.
The hoodlums were tromping pumpkins they had stolen from their neighbors' Halloween displays.
3 more examples
He lifted one foot and set it down again, whammo, but Ed was so engrossed in Pynchon's novel that all he recalls is tromping the scorpion to death with his stung foot, then quickly fetching a bucket of ice water, jamming the foot into it, and continuing to read.1988, David Quammen, The Flight of the Iguana:
Six groups of cocaleros had tromped through the campsite overnight.2014, Elizabeth Kolbert, chapter 8, in The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, Henry Holt and Company:
BLACK KNIGHT TROMPED MOODILY THROUGH THE PLAINS. JUSTICE WOULD PREVAIL, IN THE END. AT LEAST HE'D ESCAPED THE MIRROR OF FATE.2019 December 10, Yacht Club Games, "Story" (Black Knight), in Shovel Knight Showdown (version 4.1), Nintendo Switch, scene: ending
The team had been tromped by their cross-town rivals, and the players were embarrassed to show their faces in school the next day.
tromp
noun
Etymology French trombe, trompe, a waterspout, a water-blowing machine. Doublet of trump and tulumba.
1
An apparatus in which air, drawn into the upper part of a vertical tube through side holes by a stream of water within, is carried down with the water into a box or chamber below which it is led to a furnace or gathers to generate compressed air.