to trample down: to tread an enemy, a place, or a thing into the ground, crushing it in triumph or contempt
The picture underneath this verb is simple: a foot coming down hard enough to press what is beneath it into the ground. Almost every use belongs to war or to judgment, so the foot is never casual. It marks the difference between the one left standing and the one flattened.
The verb turns up in three settings that share that one picture:
- soldiers treading a beaten enemy into the mud of the street
- invaders tramping through a sanctuary or a vineyard that was never theirs to walk on
- a well fed person putting a foot on honey as though it were dirt
The Psalms use it as a boast, and the boast is careful about who does the work: God is the one who tramples the enemy, while his people go out with him. Isaiah and Jeremiah then turn the word around, first against Israel, where foreign armies trample the sanctuary and the land, and finally against the nations, when God himself treads them down in anger. The closest Hebrew synonym is רָמַס, also "to trample, stamp", which covers much of the same ground but reaches further into ordinary labor such as treading clay; this verb stays in the world of conquest and contempt.
One use leaves the battlefield entirely. In Proverbs a person who has eaten his fill "tramples" honeycomb, which is a way of saying he has no interest in it at all. English has no single word for that gesture, and the nearest Hebrew word for despising, בּוּז, carries the attitude without the foot.