Every week, you may find Lisa Quinnβs husband puttering in the Hawkesbury River in his tinnie. Lover of the elements, the mangrove quiet, Terry spends hours trying to outsmart mulloway. Yet, his biggest challenge is a verb.
According to Lisa at least, who dropped a line β a query, I mean. Her email set the scene: early morning, the Evinrude purring, Terry slides upstream or down, testing his luck with a spinner. He calls it trawling, while Lisa (at home) thinks trolling fits the bill. Whoβs right?
Unqualified as a marriage counsellor, Iβm calling it evens. Though if push comes to shove, Lisa has the edge. Both actions stem from tragelen in Dutch, meaning to drag, linking to Latinβs trahere, to pull. A fertile root, this gives us tract (a stretch of land) and contract (to draw in), distract and extract and all those other kinetic verbs.
In Terryβs case, heβs dragging a lure, seeking to attract a fish. Trawling fits the bill, as does trolling, its poetic cousin, springing from troller in Old French, meaning to wander. You may troll the hills of Tyrol, say, following a trail, which also shares the French source. As does trolley, wandering the aisle.
Stroll, however, is more family friend than relative. The verb hails from Strolch in German, a vagabond, potentially tied to astrologo in Italian, as many mediaeval drifters often turned a penny with fortune-telling. Or thatβs one theory. But letβs return to Terry and that mulloway dilemma. Are trawl and troll synonyms?
Yes and no say most dictionaries. In the Macquarie, say, trawlβs fifth definition is troll, a straight swap. The snag lies in Definitions 1-4, which all involve a net. While Meaning 3 gets messier, bringing the bottom into the picture: βto fish with a net whose edge is dragged along the sea bottom to catch the fish living thereβ. Terry doesnβt do that.
He uses a single line, mid-depth. One rod, one spinner, one tinnie. The nuance is spelt out by the Alaska Gold Seafood Company of all websites, saying, βTrolling and trawling sound alike, but differ in how they work and their effects on the ocean. A troller is a vessel operated by a single fisherman or two to three people (not infrequently family members) that pull hooks through the water typically targeting a single species such as wild king salmon.β
Trawling by contrast is omnivorous, the net swallowing any nonchalant ling lingering, plus random βbycatchβ minding its own business. Look up troll and the commercial vibe is lost. The net vanishes, the factory ship sinks. Trolling is βto fish with a moving lineβ, be that lured or baited. Said aloud, thereβs a melodic charm about troll, echoing Definition 5 (obsolete) β βto sing or utter in a full rolling voiceβ. Terry, Iβd say, has his recreational verb in troll, so long as we ignore the gremlin in the room.
Since Tolkienβs trolls draw on the same wandery root, as do the toxic derailers of chatrooms and X threads who roam the web with malign intent. Terry doesnβt do that. Terry likes to fish up and down the Hawkesbury. And in the name of conjugal harmony, letβs leave it at that.
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David Astle is the crossword compiler and Wordplay columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. He is a broadcaster on ABC Radio Melbourne.From our partners