Humptydumptyism

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'

—Through the Looking Glass, ch. VI

Humptydumptyism, or idiosyncratic definition, is a common and simple trolling tactic, vital to the creation of a trollish vocabulary. The troll (or trollherd) takes a word and finds a little-used definition for it - or makes up its own definition - then insists that its definition is the only proper use of the word. For example, where others might use any of the many definitions for community[1], the troll might insist that the word means only "those who share a risk of bodily harm", and anyone who disagrees is simply wrong. The aim of this tactic is unclear, but like much that trolls do, it has the effect of increasing discord - in this case by making meaningful communication difficult or impossible.

A variant on this tactic is claiming that a piece of text says something that serves the troll's agenda, when any literate person can see it does not. For example, a troll advocating conspiracy theories about NASA might claim that a proposed "laser broom" designed to protect the International Space Station from orbiting debris was a violation of treaties against weapons in space, even when the system was entirely ground-based. [2] Another troll might claim "[t]he terms of the GFDL itself are quite clear that any improvement to the corpus must be made available to all", though the GFDL contains no such language. This tactic is rarer, since it is easily seen through.