The term troll, used in relation to online provocateurs, is a fairly recent etymological development.
Before people talked about trolls, they referred to ‘trolling’.
I’ve wondered, from time to time, if people actually said they were trawling, and people who heard it spoken took it the wrong way.
It seems like that would make more sense.
The question is how much of this activity was spoken about, you know, actual speaking. It would happen some; on podcasts, among groups of friends or other situations where the communication is primarily verbal.
Maybe friends were sitting together at a table in a cafe with their laptops, browsing social media and one of them mentioned that he or she was “trawling the libs” or “trawling some MAGA goon”.
Alternately, this sort of conversation might happen via voice chat while playing WoW or Fortnite or something.
It might surprise you how much political chat happens in World of Warcraft, even on the public broadcast text channels, and how much trawling happens as well.
It’s a theory, anyway. Though if that were the case, online provocateurs would be called “trawls” not “trolls”. “Trolls” kind of captures the “hiding there waiting to pounce and be unpleasant” spirit of it pretty well.
When I start thinking about etymology, I always go back to a theory I hold that I have never been able to confirm:
The traditional definition for the word truck was refuse, trash, filth or garbage.
Way, way back, when automobiles were still sometimes called things like “horseless carriage” and that ilk, some enterprising individual decided to modify an old car. He (at that time and doing this thing, it almost certainly was a man) sawed-off the back, laid some wood across the frame and loaded up some stuff that he wanted to carry somewhere else.
He called it his “pick-up truck” because he used it to….
Wait for it….
Pick-up truck.
That’s what they were called. When people started to shorten the term, they cut off the end of the term, not the front. My father has always driven trucks for his personal vehicle.
When I was young, dad called his vehicle his “pick-up”.
“I left my jacket out in the pick-up.”
“Go out and start the pick-up for me and let it warm up.
Newspaper ads for car dealerships would talk about getting the new
1977 Pick-ups.
Somewhere along the way, during my lifetime, people started calling them trucks. Which is, if you think about it, kind of strange. A vehicle that was created for carrying something came to be called by a name for what it was intended to carry.
It’d be like calling your luggage “clothes” or your shoes “feet”.
The closest one I can think of is people calling their glasses “eyes”. Which, as a practical matter, is closer to reality than the other examples I gave.
I cannot think of another single example of diachronic linguistics that is comparable. Not that I’m an expert in etymology or linguistics. I just enjoy thinking about language from time to time.
The next time you’re bothered by an online troll, tell them to “Stop trawling, gather up their truck, get in their pick-up and go home.”
They’ll probably think you’re weird, but it might shut them up. Don’t make a habit of being weird though. Weird is my gig.
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