harpoon
Syllables: har·poonUK/hɑːˈpuːn/US/hɑːɹˈpuːn/
harpoon noun: a spearlike weapon with a barbed head used in hunting whales and large fish.
Noun
harpoon (plural harpoons)
Verb
harpoon (third-person singular simple present harpoons, present participle harpooning, simple past and past participle harpooned)
- To shoot something with a harpoon.
- Pilot whales, also known as blackfish, were fairly plentiful, and Mundus would harpoon one or two, haul them out onto the beach, and butcher them.1983, Richard Ellis, The Book of Sharks, Knopf, →ISBN, page 176
harpoon meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Bengali and Malayalam
harpoon in Hindi
- spearlike weapon
- हापून hāpūn
harpoon in Tamil
- எறியுளி, ஆய்வுத் திசுக்கிள்ளி, ஆய்வுத்திசு வெட்டி
harpoon in Bengali
- spearlike weapon
- টেটা ṭeṭa
harpoon in Malayalam
- ഉടക്കുളി, ചാട്ടുളി
More languagesFewer languages
- harpoon in Kannada
- ಈಟಿಗಾಳ
- harpoon in Tagalog
- salapang
- harpoon in Arabic
- حَرْبُون ḥarbūn
- harpoon in Persian
- شل šel
- harpoon in Thai
- ฉมวก chà-mùuak
- harpoon in Vietnamese
- lao móc
Examples of harpoon in a sentence
- The anchoring harpoons and retro-rockets did not work and the lander bounced off the comet.
- The last significant innovation in whalecraft combined characteristics of the harpoon and the whaling gun.
- Somebody figured out that a harpooned fish dies quicker and tastes better than one caught by the long-liners' nets.
Forms of harpoon
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | harpoons |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | harpoons |
| present participle | harpooning |
| past participle | harpooned |
| past | harpooned |
Origin of harpoon
From Old French harpon, from Latin harpaga, a variant of Latin harpagō, from Ancient Greek ἁρπάγη (harpágē, “hook”), from ἁρπάζω (harpázō, “to snatch away, to carry off, to seize, to captivate”). Sense and spelling perhaps influenced by Dutch harpoen (“harpoon”). Doublet of harpagon.
Words formed from harpoon
Phrases with harpoon
Words that rhyme with harpoon
48 more rhymesFewer rhymes
- croon
- blue moon
- boon
- monsoon
- noon
- pontoon
- raccoon
- tribune
- attune
- dragoon
- hoon
- immune
- picayune
- platoon
- soon
- swoon
- tycoon
- afternoon
- baboon
- commune
- doubloon
- jejune
- pantaloon
- picaroon
- shalloon
- bassoon
- buffoon
- cocoon
- dabloon
- entune
- gadroon
- hewn
- impugn
- jargoon
- june
- lacune
- last chance saloon
- lune
- macaroon
- man in the moon
- maroon
- poon
- puccoon
- ratoon
- scone
- toon
- trial balloon
- troon
Questions about harpoon
- What does harpoon mean?
- Harpoon means a spearlike weapon with a barbed head used in hunting whales and large fish.
- What is harpoon in Hindi?
- Harpoon in Hindi is हापून (hāpūn). See Harpoon meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is harpoon?
- Harpoon can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce harpoon?
- Harpoon is pronounced /hɑːɹˈpuːn/ (US).
- What is the plural of harpoon?
- The plural of harpoon is harpoons.
Words near harpoon in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: harpoon (page history and authors); harpoon (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); harpoon (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); harpoon (Kannada Wiktionary) (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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-harpoon.ogg.
Cite this entry: “harpoon.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/harpoon. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.