grampus

grampus noun: a killer whale (Orcinus orca).

Image: Robert Pittman, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

grampus (plural grampuses)

(archaic) A killer whale (Orcinus orca).
- Some time after this we saw some very large fish, which I afterwards found were called grampusses.1789, Olaudah Equiano, chapter 3, in The Interesting Narrative, volume I
- The Governor will blow like an old grampus, I know he will,—well, we must stop till he gets his wind again.1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 19, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published...
Risso's dolphin (Grampus griseus), with a blunt nose.
A hellbender salamander, Cryptobranchus alleganiensis.
A giant whip scorpion (Mastigoproctus giganteus)

Forms of grampus

plural	grampuses

Origin of grampus

From Middle English *grampas, grappays, grapas, graspeys, from Anglo-Norman grampais, Old French graspois, craspois (“whale, (salted) whale meat; blubber; seal”), from Medieval Latin craspicis (literally “fat fish”), from Latin crassus (“fat”) + piscis (“fish”).

Words formed from grampus

blow the grampus

Phrases with grampus

Questions about grampus

What does grampus mean?: Grampus means a killer whale (Orcinus orca).
What part of speech is grampus?: Grampus is a noun.
What is the plural of grampus?: The plural of grampus is grampuses.

Words near grampus in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: grampus (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

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