school [OE] The school that children go to derives from Greek skholē ‘leisure, philosophy, place for lectures’, the source also of scholar [OE]. Many ancient Greeks clearly spent their leisure time in intellectual pursuits rather than physical recreation. This is not the same school [LME] that large groups of fish or sea mammals congregate in. Here the word comes from early German and Dutch schōle, ‘a troop, multitude’, and comes from the same root as shoal [OE] and is related to shallow [LME].