Trawl
//tɹɔl// noun, verb
noun, verb ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 A net or dragnet used for trawling.
- 2 a conical fishnet dragged through the water at great depths wordnet
- 3 A long fishing line having many short lines bearing hooks attached to it; a setline.
- 4 a long fishing line with many shorter lines and hooks attached to it (usually suspended between buoys) wordnet
- 5 An exhaustive search.
"I embarked on a trawl through my uncle's papers in search of his missing will."
Verb
- 1 To take (fish or other marine animals) with a trawl. ambitransitive
"The fisherman went out to trawl the deep sea for shrimp."
- 2 fish with trawlers wordnet
- 3 To fish from a slow-moving boat. intransitive
"They used a large net to trawl for fish along the coast."
- 4 To make an exhaustive search for something within a defined area. intransitive
"We need to trawl through the data to find meaningful patterns."
Example
More examples"Our experienced travel consultants can help you to trawl through the best deals around."
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.
Related phrases
More for "trawl"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.