shoaling


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shoal 1

 (shōl)
n.
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.]

shoal 2

 (shōl)
n.
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."
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.