Surprising origin of the word ‘School’

We use this word since childhood. We associate it with being inside a space with lots of others, with learning, and also with playing. But ‘school’ – one of the first English words any child learns – did not start its life with any of these meanings.  

How was the word ‘school’ born?  
School started its life as a word in Greece with the word scholē. In Greek it meant ‘leisure’, completely opposite of what students or teachers take it to be today. The jump from leisure to learning is not as distant as it sounds though. The Greeks believed leisure allows a man to spend time thinking, finding out about things, learning more, and exchanging ideas. So the schole was soon a ‘place for discussion’. As Greeks exchanged ideas, discovered more, and learnt through this process of leisurely discussion, the schole became a centre for learning.   

How did ‘school’ enter English vocabulary?  
The Romans borrowed the Greek word, and started creating educational hubs called schola (as in the word ‘scholastic’), and then it appeared in Old English as scōl. In Middle English it became scole, and then Latin influence on spellings turned it into school, as we use it today.    

Is the word related to ‘school of fish’?  
Most people think the expression ‘school of fish’ have the same origin. After all, a group of fish do seem very similar to students moving around in a large group in the class or playground. But ‘school of fish’ comes from shoal, which has its roots in Middle Dutch word schole and the Old English scolu, meaning ‘multitude’. We now say shoal or school of fish to denote a group of fish moving together. Shoal was used in older English forms to mean ‘shallow’, probably because people fished about in shallow water where groups of fish moved around at daytime.   

While the two ‘schools’ started their lives as very different words from two separate languages, once they became part of the English vocabulary, they probably influenced the usage for each other.  

Most school goers don’t know this history of the word, and most parents and teachers today would not associate leisure with school.