What is the angle in angling?

[Bimini15 0]

Does it refer to the hook or to the line coming out of the rod tip?

[utyer 0]

The term refers to the hook, which was simply an angle bent into a needle, in earlier times.

[Bimini15 0]

So, a guy with a hand line... Is he still angling?

[mikechell 0]

Bimini ... are you TRYING to open a can of worms?

 

utyer jumped in with the answer, according to most dictionaries ... but others believe it's the "advantage" of using a rod to lever the fish.

 

You stated two possibilities in your question, so I'm assuming you already looked up some of the online info.

 

Maybe, just maybe, it's from olden times, when men were "outdoorsy" and women were expected to care for the house and children. Women are curves (of which I am very fond) and men are angles.

SO, "angling" was the sport of catching fish that only men were allowed to do.

[Bimini15 0]

Nope. It is an honest question...

 

I just came accross a reference to the angle meaning the hook yesterday. But I had a British Institutions professor in college, and I would believe him blindly, who explained to us once that it was called angling because of the angle formed by the line and the rod.

 

If I opened a can of worms... It would definitely be baiting, right?

[Guest]

.

[Steeldrifter 0]

I believe it is because anytime someone starts weaseling in on my fishing spot I usually give them a look with my head cocked at an angle and give them the "Oh no you %^%#$ didn't?!" look.

[Bimini15 0]

A quick Google search produced this: http://www.word-detective.com/2008/02/angler/

Good find! It makes so much sense either way.

And now I know to watch out for Lefty...

[tjm 0]

At some point pre-internet I used to look stuff like this up at a place called a library. back in those ancient days it was widely thought that the use of angle in fishing was the result of casting across and up at an angle to the river or across and down as the circumstance dictated. It was said that Dame Julia (a mythical nun) popularized the term in her 15th century treatise..

 

An Oxford Dictionary definition, fwiw;

 

VERB
angles (third person present) · angled (past tense) · angled (past participle) · angling (present participle)

1. fish with rod and line:
"there are no big fish left to angle for"


NOUN
archaic
angles (plural noun)

1. a fishhook.

..............

apparently from Latin angulus ‘corner.’ by way of German and French

 

I suppose countless folks my age and older have died and gone to the great beyond not knowing that a gorge might have been called an angel or maybe an angle.

 

English is a young language and still evolving and there are hundreds or even dozens of words that have far different meanings today than they did 50-100-200 years ago.

 

I shall continue to angle across and down. cheers

[Flat Rock native 0]

Does it refer to the hook or to the line coming out of the rod tip?

45 degrees up or down, and across. Adjusted for windage.

 

Dame J. Berners one of first fishing writers....

[Bimini15 0]

At some point pre-internet I used to look stuff like this up at a place called a library.

 

Boy...! Do I miss those card catalogues...!

[Steeldrifter 0]

Dewey decimal system fo' life yo!

[Bimini15 0]

What up, what up? My main man Dewey in da book house!

[redietz 0]

So, a guy with a hand line... Is he still angling?

 

According to the book of Job, it's the way God fishes:

 

Dost thou draw leviathan with an angle? And with a rope thou lettest down -- his tongue?

 

or in the King James Version:

 

Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook? or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down?

 

(God is telling Job and Elihu all the things that He can do that they can't.)

[mikechell 0]

gag!