Forgotten English

Language is an evolving thing, more’s the pity sometimes, but I’ll save the rant about the declining standards of grammar and spelling for another day. It is always interesting to discover forgotten words and expressions, so at Christmas I bought myself the Forgotten English Calendar, which is full of weird and wonderful linguistic gems, some familiar, others totally off the wall. Yesterday’s was a doozy and  I just had to share. The expression was “crotch-trolling”!

I’ll leave that with you for a moment. Go on, mull it over, roll the imagery it evokes around in your mind, let your imagination ponder on possible definitions, snigger at what you come up with.

Having fun?

It’s good, isn’t it?

Here’s a little crotch action just in case you were distracted and your imagination strayed towards more mundane matters. (Come on, you didn’t think I was just going to blurt out the definition straight away, did you? )

Couldn’t wait, eh? Ok, so here it is…whatever you thought crotch-trolling meant, you were wrong, unless you come from East Anglia, in which case, you might conceivably have been right, but I doubt it. Crotch-trolling is apparently “a method of…angling for pike, used in the broads and rivers in Norfolk. The fisherman has no rod, but has the usual reel and, by the help of a crotch-stick, throws his bait a considerable distance from him into the water, and then draws it gently towards him. It is much practised by poachers, as there is no rod or pole to betray their intention. – Rev. Robert Forby’s Vocabulary of East Anglia  1830″

So there you go – not what you thought at all, was it. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself now?