SHOAL

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does shoal mean? 

• SHOAL (noun)
  The noun SHOAL has 3 senses:

1. a sandbank in a stretch of water that is visible at low tide

2. a stretch of shallow water

3. a large group of fish

  Familiarity information: SHOAL used as a noun is uncommon.

• SHOAL (verb)
  The verb SHOAL has 2 senses:

1. make shallow

2. become shallow

  Familiarity information: SHOAL used as a verb is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SHOAL (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A sandbank in a stretch of water that is visible at low tide

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural objects (not man-made)

Hypernyms ("shoal" is a kind of...):

sandbank (a submerged bank of sand near a shore or in a river; can be exposed at low tide)

Derivation:

shoaly (full of submerged reefs or sandbanks or shoals)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A stretch of shallow water

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural objects (not man-made)

Synonyms:

shallow; shoal

Hypernyms ("shoal" is a kind of...):

body of water; water (the part of the earth's surface covered with water (such as a river or lake or ocean))

Derivation:

shoal (become shallow)

shoal (make shallow)

Sense 3

Meaning:

A large group of fish

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Synonyms:

school; shoal

Context example:

a school of small glittering fish swam by

Hypernyms ("shoal" is a kind of...):

animal group (a group of animals)

Meronyms (members of "shoal"):

fish (any of various mostly cold-blooded aquatic vertebrates usually having scales and breathing through gills)

• SHOAL (verb)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Make shallow

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Synonyms:

shallow; shoal

Context example:

The silt shallowed the canal

Hypernyms (to "shoal" is one way to...):

alter; change; modify (cause to change; make different; cause a transformation)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Something ----s something

Derivation:

shoal (a stretch of shallow water)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Become shallow

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Synonyms:

shallow; shoal

Context example:

the lake shallowed over time

Hypernyms (to "shoal" is one way to...):

change (undergo a change; become different in essence; losing one's or its original nature)

Sentence frame:

Something ----s

Derivation:

shoal (a stretch of shallow water)

 Context examples 

Then watch out, he thought—'ware shoal, everybody!

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Two of them came on board in less than half an hour, by whom we were guided between certain shoals and rocks, which are very dangerous in the passage, to a large basin, where a fleet may ride in safety within a cable’s length of the town-wall.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

It is nice at high water; but when the tide is out it shoals away to nothing, and there is merely the stream of the Esk, running between banks of sand, with rocks here and there.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

All told, we had scarce two miles to run; but the navigation was delicate, the entrance to this northern anchorage was not only narrow and shoal, but lay east and west, so that the schooner must be nicely handled to be got in.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Suffice it to observe, that it was a masterpiece of eloquence; and that those passages in which he more particularly traced his own successful career to its source, and warned the younger portion of his auditory from the shoals of ever incurring pecuniary liabilities which they were unable to liquidate, brought a tear into the manliest eye present.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)