trudged

verb

past tense of trudge
1
as in shuffled
to move heavily or clumsily flooded residents who were forced to trudge through waist-deep water

Synonyms & Similar Words

Relevance

Antonyms & Near Antonyms
2
as in stumbled
to proceed or act clumsily or ineffectually no expert on taxes, I spent the whole weekend trudging through government forms

Synonyms & Similar Words

Antonyms & Near Antonyms

Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of trudged In the bowels of Huntsman Arena, more than an hour after his second NBA Summer League appearance, Darryn Peterson trudged slowly into the media room at the University of Utah, eased into a chair and prepared to answer questions from the media. — Tony Jones, New York Times, 10 July 2026 Claus trudged to the monitor, watched the foul on an agonizing loop and promptly handed Balogun a red card. — Dieter Kurtenbach, Mercury News, 2 July 2026 The next morning a young man, who Colocousis said showed up in a Jeep with New York plates, trudged across a thin layer of snow to his doorstep. — ABC News, 30 June 2026 Instead of getting the victory at the 2025 Travelers Championship, Fleetwood, after a messy three-putt bogey at the 72nd hole opened the door for a Keegan Bradley walk-off birdie, trudged away with his sixth runner-up finish. — Nick Pietruszkiewicz, Hartford Courant, 21 June 2026 The polarizing organization trudged through a corruption trial and attempted to file for bankruptcy in the past decade. — Stephen Gutowski, Washington Post, 16 June 2026 Japanese police trudged through deep mud on Thursday in another unsuccessful day searching for a missing Auburn University student, who vanished after an argument with family over artificial intelligence. — David K. Li, NBC news, 4 June 2026 Putin ‘trying to erase Ukraine into a graveyard’ Charred cars were buried under rubble and people trudged through a debris-laden landscape in Kyiv on Tuesday. — Helen Regan, CNN Money, 2 June 2026 Earlier this year, 27,000 runners trudged through the city on a course that wound from Dodger Stadium to Century City. — James Queally, Los Angeles Times, 30 May 2026
Recent Examples of Synonyms for trudged
  1. shuffled
  2. stumbled
  3. stomped
  4. struggled
Verb
  • Bulldozers shuffled right through the rubble to make roads that cut Gaza into separate sections.
    — Literary Hub, Literary Hub, 16 July 2026
  • And before several services shuffled their rankings earlier this week, no QB ranked inside the top 20.
    — Grace Raynor, New York Times, 16 July 2026
Definition of shuffled
Verb
  • But if the numbers hold up, Orange County may have stumbled onto something much bigger than baseball.
    — Mike Bianchi, The Orlando Sentinel, 16 July 2026
  • After departing Ecuador en route to El Segundo, members of the crew stumbled upon an unexpected find inside the ship’s garbage — trash bags filled with cocaine, 430 pounds of it.
    — Summer Lin, Los Angeles Times, 14 July 2026
Definition of stumbled
Verb
  • Cece got out of bed, put on a pair of fuzzy pink slippers, and stomped to her mother’s office.
    — Jessica Contrera, New Yorker, 13 July 2026
  • On Monday night, a 39-year-old man wearing a Spurs jersey was stomped and punched after Game 3 while walking down West 47th Street, about 15 blocks from the arena.
    — Alaa Elassar, CNN Money, 14 June 2026
Definition of stomped
Verb
  • Turkey struggled against the USMNT’s corners throughout the game, with multiple chances created from outswinging corners towards the penalty spot.
    — Anantaajith Raghuraman, New York Times, 14 July 2026
  • The visit comes as Garrity trails Shapiro by roughly 20 points, raising questions about how much political influence DeSantis carries in a battleground state where his 2024 presidential campaign struggled to break through.
    — Barnini Chakraborty, The Washington Examiner, 14 July 2026
Definition of struggled

Browse Nearby Words

trudge
trudged
trudges
See all Nearby Words

Cite this Entry

“Trudged.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/trudged. Accessed 19 Jul. 2026.

Copy Citation

More from Merriam-Webster on trudged

Nglish: Translation of trudged for Spanish Speakers

Last Updated: - Updated example sentences
Love words? Need even more definitions?

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!

Popular in Grammar & Usage

See More

Merriam-Webster’s Great Big List of Words You Love to Hate

Is that lie 'bald-faced' or 'bold-faced'?

'A' or 'an'? What about before 'h'? An Indefinite Article Guide

Why is '-ed' sometimes pronounced at the end of a word?

Commonly Misspelled Words
See More

Popular in Wordplay

See More

14 Phobias You Probably Haven't Heard Of

It's a Scorcher! Words for the Summer Heat

The Longest Long Words List

Ten Words Ending with a Silent ‘T’

The Words of the Week - Jul 17
See More

Popular

See More

Merriam-Webster’s Great Big List of Words You Love to Hate

14 Phobias You Probably Haven't Heard Of

It's a Scorcher! Words for the Summer Heat
See More

Games & Quizzes

See All
Play Quordle: Guess all four words in a limited number of tries. Each of your guesses must be a real 5-letter word.
Quordle Can you solve 4 words at once?
Play Blossom: Solve today's spelling word game by finding as many words as you can using just 7 letters. Longer words score more points.
Blossom Pick the best words!
Play Missing Letter: a crossword with a twist. Each of the 25 puzzle words start with a different letter of the alphabet. Which letter is missing?
The Missing Letter A daily crossword with a twist
child-detective
Spot the Misspelled Word July 2026 Those little red underlines can't help you now...
See All