The word "downtrodden" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it to describe someone who is treated unfairly or has little power or influence. For example, "Many of the poorest people in the world are downtrodden and have little access to basic needs."
The school called Griffith a "pillar of the community" and a "champion for the downtrodden".
The hen harrier, threatened by persecution from the landowning classes, has emerged as a symbol of the downtrodden and therefore the most 'Guardian' candidate (editorial endorsement pending).
Staunton drew upon her mother (and the women she'd see "in headscarves standing at bus stops in the dark waiting to go to work") when she devised, with director Mike Leigh, her 2004 film breakthrough role as Vera Drake, a downtrodden cleaning lady who performs illegal abortions in 1950s London.
He was the terrifying thug Begbie in Trainspotting, the psychopathic Hillsborough survivor Albie in an award-winning, three-part episode of Cracker; he played Hamish, the amiable, hash-smoking slacker cop, in Hamish Macbeth and Gaz, the downtrodden former steelworker turned stripper in The Full Monty, which made him into an international star and changed his life irrevocably.
After studying medicine the Orthodox Jew became a physician and initialised revolutionary plans to help the most downtrodden of society.
"A deep-rooted bias prevails against … those from the downtrodden sections of society … I have myself been a victim of caste bias," the 70-year-old said.
"It's just one story about the downtrodden after another," he insisted.
One only needed to watch Le Pen's last major Paris rally to see that her followers were not the downtrodden.
The gay boys and girls; the trans people; the downtrodden.
Even the most downtrodden, such as the suppressed minority Shia in the east or the activists locked up simply for calling for reform, think they are better off than they would be in Syria or Libya.
Its indigenous people, who make up almost two-thirds of the total of 11m, remain downtrodden; its army is still over-mighty; and active citizenship is a right exercised only by a minority.
