troll [LME] In Scandinavian folklore, trolls are ugly giants or dwarfs that usually live in caves. The word entered English as some kind of demon and has no connection with troll ‘to fish by trailing a baited line along behind a boat’ [E17th], a development of an earlier use [LME] of the verb meaning ‘to ramble, stroll’, a use still current in Polari and slang. The two words seem to have fallen together in the internet use of troll. Earliest examples seem to suggest that ‘trolling’ was used in the sense of a fishing (or phishing) sense, but subsequently as a noun an internet troll has become identified as the monster-like person—a use of troll that goes back to the late 17th century. Trolley [E19th], originally a kind of low cart used for transporting goods such as fruit, vegetables, or fish, probably comes from the verb. The trolley in off your trolley [L19th], is a kind of pulley that runs along an overhead track and transmits power to drive a tram or trolleybus [E20th]. If a tram becomes disconnected from the pulley, it is no longer under control.