shool
verbEtymology From Middle English schovele (> English dialectal shoul, shool), from Old English sċofl (“shovel”), from Proto-Germanic *skuflō, *skūflō (“shovel”), equivalent to shove + -el (instrumental/agent suffix). Cognate with Scots shuffle, shule, shuil (“shovel”), Saterland Frisian Sköifel (“shovel”), West Frisian skoffel, schoffel (“hoe, spade, shovel”), Dutch schoffel (“spade, hoe”), Low German Schüfel, Schuffel (“shovel”), German Schaufel (“shovel”), Danish skovl (“shovel”), Swedish skyffel, skovel (“shovel”), Icelandic skófla (“shovel”).
1
To move materials with a shovel.
- The workers were shooling gravel and tarmac into the pothole in the road.
2
Figuratively To move with a shoveling motion, to cover as by shoveling
- 1898 The Winter's Tale [Annotated] by William Shakespeare, H. H. Furness, page 236, [Annotation for line] 511. shouels-in...Jamieson (Scottish Dict. Suppl.) gives: 'Shool, A shovel' and 'To shool on, metaph. to cover, as in a grave.'
3
To shuffle or shamble.
4
To go about begging.
- Howsomever, I should have remembered the old saying, every hog his own apple: for when they found my hold unstowed, they went all hands to shooling and begging; and, because I would not take a spell at the same duty, refused to give me the least assistance; […]1748, Tobias Smollett, The Adventures of Roderick Random:
- Derived terms
- shooler