Meaning & use

trawl

verb·Academic

To search thoroughly through a large amount of material, or to fish by dragging a net through the water.

See it in a sentence

Detectives had to trawl through hours of security footage to find the missing evidence.

The fishing boat cast its net to trawl the seabed for shrimp overnight.

A note on using this word

Trawl often implies a slow, thorough sweep through a large volume of material, whether literal water or figurative data.

Words with a similar meaning

searchcombdredge

Choose a synonym to suit the sentence. Meanings can overlap without being identical.

Another way to use it

2. noun

A large net dragged along the sea bottom to catch fish.

The crew hauled in a trawl heavy with cod and flatfish.

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