great whale
great whale noun: any of the largest thirteen species of whale currently extant (a polyphyletic grouping, all of which are baleen whales except the sperm whale).
Noun
great whale (plural great whales)
- Any of the largest thirteen species of whale currently extant (a polyphyletic grouping, all of which are baleen whales except the sperm whale).
- Other early hunters of whales included [...] the Basques, who developed the first organized whale fishery [...] in the Bay of Biscay, and who managed through overfishing virtually to eliminate an entire stock of great whales - those known as the Biscayan right whales.1971 Dec, National Geographic, page 725
Forms of great whale
| plural | great whales |
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Questions about great whale
- What does great whale mean?
- Great whale means any of the largest thirteen species of whale currently extant (a polyphyletic grouping, all of which are baleen whales except the sperm whale).
- What part of speech is great whale?
- Great whale is a noun.
- What is the plural of great whale?
- The plural of great whale is great whales.
Words near great whale in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: great 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: “great whale.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/great_whale. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.