school

\ \ School for teaching [OE] and school of fish [14] are different words. The former was borrowed into prehistoric Germanic from medieval Latin scōla, and has since evolved into German schule, Dutch school, Swedish skola, and Danish skole, as well as English school. The medieval Latin word itself goes back via classical Latin schola to Greek skholé. This originally denoted ‘leisure’, and only gradually developed through ‘leisure used for intellectual argument or education’ and ‘lecture’ to ‘school’ (in the sense ‘educational assembly’) and finally ‘school’ the building. The Latin word has spread throughout Europe, not just in the Romance languages (French école, Italian scuola, Spanish escuela), but also into Welsh ysgol, Irish scoil, Latvian skuola, Russian shkola, Polish szkola, etc. Derivatives of the Latin word in English include scholar [14] and scholastic [16]. School of fish was borrowed from Middle Dutch schōle ‘troop, group’. This went back to a prehistoric West Germanic *skulo, which may have been derived from the base *skal-, *skel-, *skul- ‘split, divide’ (source also of English scale, scalp, shell, etc); if so, it would mean etymologically a ‘division’.

\ \ Cf.⇒ SCHOLAR, SCHOLASTIC; SHOAL