Whaling

How to spell whaling

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce whaling

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does whaling mean?

1. nounThe activity or industry of hunting whales for oil, meat, or other products.

Whaling in a sentence

• The museum traces the history of commercial whaling in the North Atlantic.

• An international moratorium curbed whaling to protect endangered species.

Where does whaling come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is built on 'whale', which descends directly from the Old English 'hwæl', the native Germanic name for the great sea mammal, related to forms across the old Germanic languages such as Old Norse 'hvalr' and Old High German 'wal'. The 'wh' spelling preserves the original 'hw' cluster that Anglo-Saxon speakers actually pronounced, with a breathy h sound before the w, even though most modern English accents have flattened it so that 'whale' now sounds identical to 'wail'. The '-ing' ending turns the noun into the activity of pursuing and killing whales, a usage that grew with the commercial hunt that flourished from the seventeenth century onward. Because the 'hw' was reduced in speech, writers can easily reach for the unrelated 'wailing' (from Old Norse 'væla', to lament), so remembering the whale keeps the silent-looking 'h' in place. More recently the word gained a second life in computer security, where it names the targeting of senior executives, the 'big fish', by deceptive emails.

How the word is built

• whal- (from whale, the marine mammal)
• -ing (verbal/gerund suffix)

Words that sound like whaling

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• wailing: Crying out in a long, loud, high-pitched way from grief or pain.