"Trolling" for "Trawling": An Eggcorn?

[David Borowitz]

The OED has, under troll (v.) 13:

   In quot. 1606 perh. confused with TRAWL.
   1606 S. GARDINER Bk. Angling 28 Consider how God by his Preachers
   trowleth for thee. 1651-7 [see TROLLING vbl. n. 3]. 1675 CROWNE
   Country Wit v, Here have I been angling and trowling for my
   Father-in-law, and have had him at my hook all day. 1682 NOBBES Compl.
   Troller (1822) 226 In some places, they troll without a rod, or
   playing the bait, as I have seen them throw a line out of a boat, and
   so let it draw after them as they row. 1711 GAY Rural Sports I. 264
   Nor drain I ponds the golden carp to take, Nor trowle for pikes,
   dispeoplers of the lake. 1764 GOLDSM. Trav. 187 The peasant..With
   patient angle trolls the finny deep. 1814-24 P. HAWKER Instr. Yng.
   Sportsm. 173 Trolling, or spinning a minnow, is the other most general
   mode of trout fishing. 1831 Encycl. Brit. (ed. 7) III. 144/2 Trolling,
   in the more limited sense of the word, signifies catching fish with
   the gorge-hook, which is composed of two, or what is called a double
   eel-hook. 1864 WEBSTER, Troll,..to angle..with a hook drawn along the
   surface of the water. 1881 Harper's Mag. Nov. 831, I troll a cast of
   flies. 1891 LANG Angling Sk. 5 Trolling a minnow from a boat in Loch
   Leven {em} probably the lowest possible form of angling. 1966 E.
   LINDALL Time too Soon iv. 51 Kamindo had rebuffed him when he had
   trolled for information. 1984 Monitor (McAllen, Texas) 1 May 6A/3 It
   will troll the Earth's upper atmosphere for magnetospheric,
   atmospheric and gravitational data.

Seems to me that if it's an eggcorn, it's very old. But it also seems to me
like the processes that cause confusions like this one were slightly
different back when the orthography was a lot less standardized and people a
lot less literate.

I guess an interesting related question is how the distribution of aw/ol
breaks down in the more literal vs. figurative senses.

On 8/1/07, Fred Shapiro <fred.shapiro at yale.edu> wrote:
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Fred Shapiro <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      "Trolling" for "Trawling": An Eggcorn?
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> A friend of mine who is an English professor at the University of
> Pennsylvania posed this question:
>
> "Since when did the verb 'trawling,' borrowed from (or having the same
> root as) ships and fishing, become 'trolling,' as in trolling for votes,
> or for campaign dollars, or for justifications for going to war, etc.?
> What does a hairy monster living under a bridge have to do with
> in-gathering?"
>
> Any comments?  Is this an eggcorn?
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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--
It is better to be quotable than to be honest.
    -Tom Stoppard

Borowitz

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