¹school

teach, instruct, educate, train, discipline, school mean to cause to acquire knowledge or skill. teach applies to any manner of imparting information or skill so that others may learn <taught us a lot about our planet>. instruct suggests methodical or formal teaching <instructs raw recruits in military drill>. educate implies development of the mind <more things than formal schooling serve to educate a person>. train stresses instruction and drill with a specific end in view <trained foreign pilots to operate the new aircraft>. discipline implies training in habits of order and precision <a disciplined mind>. school implies training or disciplining especially in what is hard to master <schooled the horse in five gaits>.

You may not think of your education as relaxation, but, believe it or not, the word school can be traced back to a Greek word meaning “leisure.” Ancient Greek scholē, “rest, leisure,” came to be applied to the philosophical discussions in which the best of Greek society spent their free time (of which they had a great deal, since slaves did most of the real work). The meaning of scholē was extended to the groups who listened to a particular philosopher, and later to the set of beliefs held by such a group. When Latin schola was borrowed from Greek, the emphasis fell more on the place where a philosopher spoke, and it is the sense “place of instruction” that was ultimately passed to English.

A group of fish is called a school not because they resemble students in a classroom. The word school in this sense is borrowed from a Dutch word that means “crowd” or “throng.”