different between herd vs shoal

English

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /h??d/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /h?d/
• Rhymes: -??(?)d
• Homophone: heard

Etymology 1

From Middle English herde, heerde, heorde, from Old English hierd, heord (“herd, flock; keeping, care, custody”), from Proto-Germanic *herd? (“herd”), from Proto-Indo-European *?erd?- (“file, row, herd”). Cognate with German Herde, Swedish hjord. Non-Germanic cognates include Albanian herdhe (“nest”) and Serbo-Croatian krdo.

Noun

herd (plural herds)

1. A number of domestic animals assembled together under the watch or ownership of a keeper. [from 11th c.]
   • 1768, Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,

     The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea.

2. Any collection of animals gathered or travelling in a company. [from 13th c.]
   • 2007, J. Michael Fay, Ivory Wars: Last Stand in Zakouma, National Geographic (March 2007), 47,

     Zakouma is the last place on Earth where you can see more than a thousand elephants on the move in a single, compact herd.

3. (now usually derogatory) A crowd, a mass of people; now usually pejorative: a rabble. [from 15th c.]
   • 1833, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Table Talk, 8 June 1833

     You can never interest the common herd in the abstract question.

Derived terms

• herd immunity
• herd instinct

Translations

Verb

herd (third-person singular simple present herds, present participle herding, simple past and past participle herded)

1. (intransitive) To unite or associate in a herd; to feed or run together, or in company.

   Sheep herd on many hills.
2. (transitive) To unite or associate in a herd
3. (transitive) To manage, care for or guard a herd

4. (intransitive) To associate; to ally oneself with, or place oneself among, a group or company.

   • I’ll herd among his friends, and seem
     One of the number.

Translations

Etymology 2

From Middle English herde, from Old English hirde, hierde, from Proto-West Germanic *hird?, from Proto-Germanic *hirdijaz. Cognate with German Hirte, Swedish herde, Danish hyrde.

Noun

herd (plural herds)

1. (now rare) Someone who keeps a group of domestic animals; a herdsman.
   • 2000, Alasdair Grey, The Book of Prefaces, Bloomsbury 2002, page 38:

     Any talent which gives a good new thing to others is a miracle, but commentators have thought it extra miraculous that England's first known poet was an illiterate herd.

Derived terms

Related terms

Translations

Verb

herd (third-person singular simple present herds, present participle herding, simple past and past participle herded)

1. (intransitive, Scotland) To act as a herdsman or a shepherd.
2. (transitive) To form or put into a herd.
3. (transitive) To move or drive a herd.

Translations

See also

• Appendix:English collective nouns
• drove
• gather
• muster
• round up
• ride herd on

Norwegian Bokmål

Verb

herd

1. imperative of herde

Old High German

Etymology

From Proto-West Germanic *herþ.

Noun

herd m

1. hearth

Descendants

• Middle High German: hert
  • German: Herd
  • Luxembourgish: Häerd

English

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /???l/, /???l/
• Rhymes: -??l

Etymology 1

From Middle English schold, scholde, from Old English s?eald (“shallow”), perhaps from Proto-Germanic *skalidaz, past participle of *skaljan? (“to go dry, dry up, become shallow”), from *skalaz (“parched, shallow”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kelh?- (“to dry out”). Cognate with Low German Scholl (“shallow water”), German schal (“stale, flat, vapid”). Compare shallow.

Alternative forms

• sheld (dialectal)
• shaul, shawl, shauld, schald, shaud, shawd (Scotland)
• shole, shoald, shold

Adjective

shoal (comparative shoaler, superlative shoalest)

1. (now rare) Shallow.
   • 1819, Lord Byron, Don Juan, III.19:

     But that part of the coast being shoal and bare, / And rough with reefs which ran out many a mile, / His port lay on the other side o' the isle.

Noun

shoal (plural shoals)

1. A sandbank or sandbar creating a shallow.
   • The god himself with ready trident stands, / And opes the deep, and spreads the moving sands, / Then heaves them off the shoals.

2. A shallow in a body of water.

   • The depth of your pond should be six feet; and on the sides some shoals for the fish to sun themselves in and to lay their spawn.

Synonyms

• (sandbank): sandbar, sandbank

Translations

Verb

shoal (third-person singular simple present shoals, present participle shoaling, simple past and past participle shoaled)

1. To arrive at a shallow (or less deep) area.
2. (transitive) To cause a shallowing; to come to a more shallow part of.
   • 1859', Matthew Fontaine Maury, Explanations and Sailing Directions to Accompany the Wind and Current Charts

     Noting the rate at which she shoals her water - […]

3. To become shallow.

Etymology 2

1570, presumably from Middle English *schole (“school of fish”), from Old English s?eolu, s?olu (“troop or band of people, host, multitude, division of army, school of fish”), from Proto-Germanic *skul? (“crowd”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kelH- (“to divide, split, separate”). Cognate with West Frisian skoal (“shoal”), Middle Low German sch?le (“multitude, troop”), Dutch school (“shoal of fishes”). Doublet of school.

Noun

shoal (plural shoals)

1. Any large number of persons or things.
   • 1625, Francis Bacon, Of Vicissitude of Things

     great shoals of people

2. (collective) A large number of fish (or other sea creatures) of the same species swimming together.
   • c. 1661, Edmund Waller, On St. James's Park

     Beneath, a shoal of silver fishes glides.

Synonyms

• (fish): school

Translations

Verb

shoal (third-person singular simple present shoals, present participle shoaling, simple past and past participle shoaled)

1. To collect in a shoal; to throng.

   The fish shoaled about the place.

Anagrams

• HALOs, LOHAS, Sohal, halos, shola, solah