🚀 go-pugleaf

Tim May  <timcmay@removethis.got.net> writes:

: A person who trolls isn't a "troll"; he's a *troller.*

> Back formations, even accidental intersections with established
> words, are what makes a language rich(er). Akin to punning.

My beef isn't with back formations per se, but with inaccuracy.  

Here's an analogy: someone who hacks is a hacker.  Any given example
of that thing that he does is a hack.  Similarly, someone who trolls
is a troller.  The provocative post intended to spark emotional res-
ponses, and not the guy who wrote it, is the troll.


> Trolling as a noun, derived from trawling, trolling, as in fishing,
> back-forms a connection to the Old Norse/folk legend image of a troll. 

This back formation is the result of a misunderstading arising from the
fact that more people are familiar with folk-legend trolls than with 
the type of fishing known as trolling.  After all, anyone who was a
child in a European culture knows about trolls.  Trolling, however, is
more specialized knowledge.  The fact that this confusion is easily
explained (and common) doesn't make it correct.



Geoff

-- 
"There is one evil which...should never be passed over in silence
 but be continually publicly attacked, and that is corruption of 
 the language..." -- W.H. Auden