trods

Trods is a word that appears in limited, mostly regional or historical usage. In standard modern English, trod is the simple past tense and past participle of tread, while trods as a plural is uncommon and largely encountered only in dialect or archaic contexts. In those dialectal uses, a trod (and by extension trods) can refer to a path, track, or beaten ground formed by repeated passage.

In regional varieties of English, especially in some northern and Scottish dialects, trod or trods may be used as a noun to denote a way through terrain—essentially a path worn by people or livestock. This sense is infrequent in contemporary writing and conversation, where terms like path, track, or footpath are more typical. Because the noun usage is narrow and archival, dictionaries of modern English may only note it as a historical or dialectal form rather than a common current term.

Outside dialectal contexts, trods primarily appears as the plural of the verb form trod in constructions that are now rare or stylistically marked. When encountered in literature or linguistic texts, the emphasis is on its relation to the verb tread rather than as a stand-alone everyday noun.

See also: tread, trodden, path, track.