Lisa says her husband is ‘trolling’, but he denies it. Who’s right?

Every week, you may find Lisa Quinn’s 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 – 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. Who’s right?

Unqualified as a marriage counsellor, I’m 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 Latin’s 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 Terry’s case, he’s 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.