shoaling

Also found in: Thesaurus, Encyclopedia, Wikipedia.

shoal¹

(shōl)

1. A shallow place in a body of water.

2. A sandy elevation of the bottom of a body of water, constituting a hazard to navigation; a sandbank or sandbar.

v. shoaled, shoal·ing, shoals

v.intr.

To become shallow: The river shoals suddenly here from eight to two fathoms.

v.tr.

1. To make shallow: The approach to the harbor was shoaled in the storm.

2. To come or sail into a shallower part of.

adj.

Having little depth; shallow.

[Middle English shold, shallow, shallows, from Old English sceald, shallow.]

shoal²

(shōl)

1. A large school of fish or other aquatic animals.

2. A large group; a crowd: a shoal of advisers.

intr.v. shoaled, shoal·ing, shoals

To come together in large numbers: The fish were shoaling.

[Probably Middle Low German or Middle Dutch schōle; see skel- in Indo-European roots.]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

References in periodicals archive ?

We most often are fishing for shoals of fish--or shoaling fish--as in "a shoaling group of smallmouths relating loosely to each other as they move around on a rock hump."

A school is not a shoal of fish

bulboglossa) and per capita parasite load as phenotypic characters potentially underlying assortative shoaling, because C.

Assortative shoaling, as observed in the current study, could be due to a number of different mechanisms that are not mutually exclusive.

shoaling

shoal 1

shoal 2

shoal¹

shoal²