trawl

Pronunciation: /tɹɔːl/

The English word “trawl” has 6 meanings listed here.

noun

A net or dragnet used for trawling.
A long fishing line having many short lines bearing hooks attached to it; a setline.
An exhaustive search.

verb

To take (fish or other marine animals) with a trawl.
To fish from a slow-moving boat.
To make an exhaustive search for something within a defined area.

Etymology

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.

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.