What does “troll” mean in English?
The Goat And The Hungry Troll
A1 English listening practice · English · Picked for people who know a little
In fairy tales, a troll is a big, ugly creature that lives under a bridge or in the mountains and wants to eat people or goats. Today the same word has a second meaning: on the internet, a troll is a person who writes rude comments just to make others angry. One spelling, two very different pictures.
The story here is a version of the old Norse tale of the Three Billy Goats Gruff. The troll says “I’m a big, hungry troll” and then the joke arrives: trolls eat grass. The online meaning also gives a verb: to troll someone means to annoy them on purpose, and “Don’t feed the trolls” means “don’t reply to them.”
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Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · SUBTLEX-US 2012 (spoken). These numbers are close, not perfect.