trawl

16th century, borrowed from Dutch tragelen (“to pull with a towline, trawl”), from Middle Dutch traghelen, from traghel (“dragnet”) (presumably from Latin tragula (“dragnet”)), and as such root-cognate with English drag and dray.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /tɹɔːl/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• (US) IPA^(key): /tɹɔl/, /tɹɑl/
• Rhymes: -ɔːl
• Homophone: troll (some dialects)

trawl (plural trawls)

1. A net or dragnet used for trawling. [from the 16th c.]
2. A long fishing line having many short lines bearing hooks attached to it; a setline.

• → Portuguese: trol
• → Russian: трал (tral)

trawl (third-person singular simple present trawls, present participle trawling, simple past and past participle trawled)

1. (ambitransitive) To take (fish or other marine animals) with a trawl.

   The fisherman went out to trawl the deep sea for shrimp.

2. (intransitive) To fish from a slow-moving boat.

   They used a large net to trawl for fish along the coast.

3. (intransitive) To make an exhaustive search for something within a defined area.

   We need to trawl through the data to find meaningful patterns.

• troll

• → Faroese: trol