Word.ws English Dictionary

he's-at-home

he's-at-home noun: a dildo gifted by a whaleman to his wife for use while he is at sea, sometimes made of scrimshaw.

Noun

he's-at-home (plural he's-at-homes)

  1. (euphemistic, Nantucket) A dildo gifted by a whaleman to his wife for use while he is at sea, sometimes made of scrimshaw.
    • An island tradition claims that Nantucket women dealt with their husbands' long absences by relying on sexual aids known as "he's-at-homes."2000, Nathaniel Philbrick, In the Heart of the Sea: Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, →ISBN, page 17
    • In Moby-Dick, Captain Ahab tells his first mate, Starbuck, that of the past forty years of “making war on the horrors of the deep” he’d only been ashore three, leaving only “one dent in [his] marriage pillow.” “[W]ife?” Ahab rages, “wife?—rather a widow with her husband alive!” The dildos, called...2015 October 22, Ben Shattuck, “He’s-At-Home”, in The Common, number 10, Amherst College

Forms of he's-at-home

pluralhe's-at-homes

Questions about he's-at-home

What does he's-at-home mean?
He's-at-home means a dildo gifted by a whaleman to his wife for use while he is at sea, sometimes made of scrimshaw.
What part of speech is he's-at-home?
He's-at-home is a noun.
What is the plural of he's-at-home?
The plural of he's-at-home is he's-at-homes.

Words near he's-at-home in the dictionary

  1. he'll've
  2. He'nan
  3. he'p
  4. he's
  5. he's unconscious
  6. he's-at-home
  7. he's-at-homes
  8. he'sn't
  9. he've
  10. he-
  11. he-ass

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: he's-at-home (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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