Whale
nounA very large marine mammal that breathes air and lives in the ocean.
How to spell whale
5 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce whale
What does whale mean?
- nounA very large marine mammal that breathes air and lives in the ocean.
- verbTo strike or beat someone or something repeatedly and forcefully (informal).
Whale in a sentence
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noun
The tourists boarded a boat hoping to photograph a whale off the coast.
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verb
The drummer would whale on the cymbals at the end of every song.
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noun
A blue whale is the largest animal that has ever lived.
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verb
He watched the boxer whale away at the heavy bag for an hour.
Where does whale come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
Whale descends from the Old English hwæl, the word Anglo-Saxon sailors used for the enormous sea creatures they hunted and feared. It traces back to a shared Germanic root, seen in the Old Norse hvalr and the German Wal, all naming the same giant marine animals. The initial 'hw' spelling of Old English was gradually reversed to 'wh' by Norman scribes after 1100, which is why the word now begins with the silent-feeling 'wh' that trips writers up. An old and surprising relative is 'walrus', whose name was partly reshaped under the influence of this very word. The informal verb sense, meaning to beat or thrash someone soundly, grew up in the 1700s, probably blending the idea of a heavy blow with the older verb 'wale' meaning to mark with welts.
How the word is built
- whale (whole word, from Old English hwæl: large sea mammal)
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