Trawling for Meaning
In a short posting yesterday ("Trolling for Phone Sex?") I quoted a paragraph about a curious use of the word "trolling" by the President, a word whose slang meaning is "to cruise for sex". In the comments, Chris pointed out that, in a similar situation, he would use the verb "to trawl" which, by analogy to its literal meaning of fishing with a net or long line, means to go through information or materials on an unspecific search for something of interest (i.e., to go on "a fishing expedition").
I agree with Chris as, evidently, did the author of the piece I quoted as well as the author of the Denver Post article she quoted, called "Bush: we don't 'troll' personal lives." But was it in the official White House text that way, or was it a transcription error on somebody's part? In other words, was it written by someone in the White House as "trolling", or was it merely heard that way?
The answer is not clear, but some interesting things turned up that surprised me. I looked for the White House transcript of the remarks. It appears that they came in a weekly radio address, dated 13 May 2006. The relevant excerpt:
This week, new claims have been made about other ways we are tracking down al Qaeda to prevent attacks on America. It is important for Americans to understand that our activities strictly target al Qaeda and its known affiliates. Al Qaeda is our enemy, and we want to know their plans. The intelligence activities I have authorized are lawful and have been briefed to appropriate members of Congress, both Republican and Democrat. The privacy of all Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities. The government does not listen to domestic phone calls without court approval. We are not trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans. Our efforts are focused on links to al Qaeda terrorists and its affiliates who want to harm the American people.
Now, whether this is a prepared text or a transcript of what the President said is not clear, but it is an official document of the White House showing the word as "trolling".
Nor is this a singular incident. Search Google for "trolling", restricted to the White House site, and you'll find that the word has had a mini-vogue in this administration. One that I dipped into was a "Press Briefing by Scott McClellan", dated 11 February 2004. In this instance it was a reporter who introduced the phrase "trolling for trash" into the conversation; Mr. McClellan later used the phrase three times in his answers. I'd like to backtrack that reporter's use of the phrase "trolling for trash", too.
There was one document, a White House briefing paper about "faith-based initiatives" called "Unlevel Playing Fields: Barriers to Participation by Faith-Based and Community Organizations in Federal Social Service Programs, that appears to be originally produced in written form (rather than transcribed from a spoken version) that used "trolling". That white paper is dated August 2001.
Still, it's not obvious that "trolling" is not just a mishearing of "trawling" said with a Texas accent. Chris and I apparently agree that the two words, while similar in sound, are nevertheless distinct.
However, in what I find a curious twist, Wiktionary disagrees with us. The entry for trawl claims that "troll" is a homophone! They do, however, seem to prefer "trawl" for the fishing verb, "troll" for the cruising-for-sex verb (which isn't mentioned as a meaning of "trawl").
So, it's still not clear whether the White House pronouncements really meant "troll" or whether they're using a Texas-accented "trawl". For what it's worth, 13 out of 14 of the ads that Google offered up when I searched for "trolling" concerned fishing and not cruising for sex, although the one headlined "Learn Trolling in Utah" I thought was on the ambiguous side.
[Update 1.5 hours later:]
Starting the list of contemporary citations, here's another example from my reading of "trolling" used to mean a metaphorical fishing expedition:
How many Nampa kids will now be trolling for explicit books now that the bible thumpers have alerted them to exactly where they are and what they contain?
— "Radical" Russ, "Princess Barbie Talibania: Arbiter of Appropriate Library Materials", Pam's House Blend, 16 May 2006.