Word.ws English Dictionary

flue whale

flue whale noun: a hybrid of a fin whale and a blue whale.

Noun

flue whale (plural flue whales)

  1. A hybrid of a fin whale and a blue whale.
    • What does a hybrid whale look like? Sometimes nicknamed “flue whale” (a combination of the words “fin” and “blue”), these hybrids can present traits of both parent species.2024 April 11, Odélie Brouillette, “Unravelling the Mysteries of Hybridization in Blue Whales”, in Whales Online, archived from the original on 17 Jun 2025
    • Calambokidis, who has spent more than 50 years studying cetaceans, suspects Whale 52 may be a hybrid: part blue whale, part fin whale. Such a creature, often called a flue whale, is growing more common as warming seas push blues into new breeding grounds, where they are increasingly likely to mate...2025 April 2, Avery Schuyler Nunn, “What ‘the world’s loneliest whale’ may be telling us about climate change”, in Grist, archived from the original on 05 Apr 2025

Examples of flue whale in a sentence

  • Such a creature, often called a flue whale, is growing more common as warming seas push blues into new breeding grounds, where they are increasingly likely to mate with their fin relatives.2025 April 2, Avery Schuyler Nunn, “What ‘the world’s loneliest whale’ may be telling us about climate change”, in Grist, archived from the...
  • Or could it be a hybrid of two species – perhaps it’s a flue whale, the offspring of a blue and fin whale?2026 February 3, Melissa Hobson, “The US Navy detected a strange sound in the ocean. These scientists think it could be coming from the...

Forms of flue whale

pluralflue whales

Origin of flue whale

Blend of fin whale + blue whale.

Questions about flue whale

What does flue whale mean?
Flue whale means a hybrid of a fin whale and a blue whale.
How do you use flue whale in a sentence?
Such a creature, often called a flue whale, is growing more common as warming seas push blues into new breeding grounds, where they are increasingly likely to mate with their fin relatives.
What part of speech is flue whale?
Flue whale is a noun.
What is the plural of flue whale?
The plural of flue whale is flue whales.

Words near flue whale in the dictionary

  1. flue gasses
  2. flue pipe
  3. flue pipes
  4. flue stop
  5. flue stops
  6. flue whale
  7. flue whales
  8. flue-faker
  9. flue-fakers
  10. Flueckiger
  11. flued

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: flue whale (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “flue whale.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/flue_whale. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.