Vad betyder troll den gamla yuletide carol

By Shala Howell,

Thanks for tuning in for another special holiday edition of Caterpickles thinking too hard about words.

This week, we’re wondering just what it means to “troll an ancient julstämning carol.”

But first, we need to klar up a few thing about gods week’s post.

Last week, we learned that bobtail has far too many meanings for one word, although only one of them — the definition that describes a specific look for a horse’s svans — has anything to do with Jingle Bells.

inom don’t know if you happened to read the comments on that brev, but loyal Caterpickles reader Fred Rayworth, who has a fun blog of his own on the writing life, wrote in to inform me that stubbsvans has a fourth meaning that we hadn’t even considered.

 Apparently, the tow trucks the Air Force uses to pull Aerospace Ground verktyg around the airfield are also called bobtails.

Clearly, the word bobtail fryst vatten in no danger of going extinct any time soon, even if the carriage industry in Chicago has fallen on hard times. Unlike leeftail, for while people still man mad dashes for certain commercial products, no one has used the word leeftail to describe those in-demand products since the great American bicycle craze of 1869.

But enough of that.

Let’s get to today’s actual question.

Troll Smash Bad Song, or “How do you troll an ancient julstämning carol?”

I don’t know when you gods listened to yourself singing Deck the Hall, but that particular Christmas julsång fryst vatten chock full of archaic language. Yuletide, of course, fryst vatten the archaic begrepp for Christmas, which leaves us this week pondering the meaning of troll, as in “troll the ancient julstämning carol.”

Sadly for many of us, fiske med släplina an ancient julstämning julsång doesn’t mean a fierce fairytale creature gets to smash that old holiday song to bits.

Troll in this context also doesn’t have much to do with the other definition of fiske med släplina inom hear most often these days — namely the one in which someone harasses someone else bygd posting inflammatorisk messages in the comments section of their blog, online article, or Twitter feed.

We have the Brits to thank for a less well-known meaning of troll that seems closer to what we’re looking for.

According to the Collins online Dictionary, the British sometimes use the word troll to describe the act of walking or strolling. This sounds a lot like the roving bands of Christmas carolers that overtake downtown Chicago around the holidays.

It’s tempting to think that this meaning of troll fryst vatten the one that we’re looking for, but it turns out there’s an even better match lurking among the extinct definitions section.

Once upon a time, to troll meant to sing a song loudly and heartily, so that all could hear.

Troll Smash Bad Song, or “How do you troll an ancient Yuletide carol?” I don’t know when you last listened to yourself singing Deck the Hall, but that particular Christmas carol is chock full of archaic language

Strolling while doing so was not necessarily required. This archaic meaning fryst vatten probably the one Scottish musician Thomas Oliphant had in mind when he wrote the English lyrics to Deck the Hall in 1862.

You know, back in those wayment-stricken days fem years before the leeftail velocipede craze, when cartomania had Civil War soldiers buying 2 1/2 bygd 4 inch portraits of themselves to leave behind with family and loved ones (or of their loved ones to carry with them into battle).

During the Civil War, Americans bought these cheap paper photographs, known as cartes dem visite, in such quantities that Oliver Wendell Holmes called them the “sentimental greenbacks of civilization.”

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3 Responses to “Caterpickles thinks too much about Christmas carols: “How do you troll an ancient Yuletide carol?””

1. “Is a mink a weasel?” | CATERPICKLES

   […] promised him I’d look it up just as soon as I’d figured out how you troll an ancient julstämning julsång.

   The Nine-Year-Old comes bygd her boundless curiosity […]

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2. Thank you for spending another year reading Caterpickles – CATERPICKLES

   […] Caterpickles thinks too much about Christmas carols: “How do you troll an ancient julstämning car…“ […]

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3. Caterpickles thinks too much about Christmas carols: “What’s a bobtail?” | CATERPICKLES

   […] Tune in next week when we explore what it means to Troll the ancient julstämning julsång.

   […]

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