School of fish or catch of fish?

[AngelicaDeAlquezar]

Long ago I learnt that a group of fish was called a school of fish, but yesterday, in a list of collective names I found "catch of fish".
Are we talking about two different things or are both expressions synonymous?

[wrholt]

They are different: one is the name of a group of peces, the other is the name of a group of pescados.

[AngelicaDeAlquezar]

Oooh, I see. I should have imagined.

Thank you, Wrholt!

[Aprendo]

School of fish = a group of fish.

Same as the classifications of:


Flock of birds / geese / seagulls

Herd of Buffalos / cows / sheep

Pod of Wales

[Sancho Panther]

School of fish is another way of saying "Shoal" which is more widely used.

[AngelicaDeAlquezar]

I didn't know "shoal". Thank you for the new word, Sancho!!

[Perikles]

Originally Posted by AngelicaDeAlquezar

I didn't know "shoal".

Collective nouns in English are very complicated, and although "shoal" is common for fish, there is also

A company of angel fish / archer fish
A battery of barracudas
A fleet of bass
A school of cod
A troop of dogfish
A flotilla of swordfish
A bind of salmons.....

There are many more, and the best site I could find of these is this

Note the "gaggle of geese" and the "gaggle of women"

[Sancho Panther]

Originally Posted by AngelicaDeAlquezar

I didn't know "shoal". Thank you for the new word, Sancho!!

"Shoal" is the most widely used in the UK, 'school' is mostly for very large fish, but I think it's 'pod' for whales though!

US usage will probably be different.

[AngelicaDeAlquezar]

@Perikles: I know they're difficult. My favourites so far were a congress of baboons (no wonder) and a murder of crows. I wonder who on earth has named flocks of specific species with a different name for each. In Spanish they're far less varied.
Thanks for the link.


@Sancho: Of course, this is not a word to be found in my daily conversations, so I hadn't ever heard it, even from my British friends. Anyway, I'm always happy to learn new words, and I can't wait to use it soon even if I have to introduce a weird chat topic.

[Sancho Panther]

Then there's:-

An 'unkindness' of ravens!

[AngelicaDeAlquezar]

Oh, cool, I knew "conspiracy", but "unkindness" sounds better.

[Rusty]

I have a collection of collective nouns. These are the collective nouns used for ravens.

[poli]

I've never heard of an unkindness of ravens, but I have heard of a gaggle of geese.

[AngelicaDeAlquezar]

Looking at this, Spanish language is quite uninventive.

[Rusty]

Looking at the website linked above, I see that I'm missing a few, and so are they.

One of my favorites is 'a hearse of vultures'.

[Perikles]

Of course one has to ask on what authority these sites give these nouns - a lot of them are probably made up by the author. I like the "wilderness of monkeys" which I heard in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. There are some amusing ones, like a "set of mathematicians" and a "pile of nuclear physicists".

[Sancho Panther]

A 'body' of pathologists - that one from the (Inspector) "Morse" tv series - when Morse queried the absence of the regular pathologist and being informed that he was attending a professional conference.