porpoise
UK/ˈpɔːpəs//ˈpɔːɹpəs/
porpoise noun: a small cetacean of the family Phocoenidae, related to dolphins and whales.
Noun
porpoise (plural porpoises)
- A small cetacean of the family Phocoenidae, related to dolphins and whales.
- Near-synonyms: sea hog, sea pig, seaswine, mereswine
- They captured 25 porpoises and set them free back into the Yangtze after raising them for a month in Puqi County, Hubei.1991, Zhou Kaiya, Zhang Xingduan, translated by Luo Changyan, Baiji: The Yangtze River Dolphin and Other Endangered Animals of China, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 76
- Any small dolphin.
Verb
porpoise (third-person singular simple present porpoises, present participle porpoising, simple past and past participle porpoised)
- Said of an air-breathing aquatic animal such as a porpoise or penguin: To repeatedly jump out of the water to take a breath and dive back in a continuous motion.
- Urging them to join me, I raced in circles through the surging water, chased my tail for the children, blew spouts of foam through the sunfilled spray, porpoised to and fro across the river in shallow leaps that stitched the air and water into a table-lace of foam.1979, J.G. Ballard, The Unlimited Dream Company, chapter 15
- Said of an aircraft: to make a series of plunges when taking off or landing; or of a watercraft: to successively plunge up and down in the water.
- Synonyms:
- balloon
porpoise meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam
porpoise in Hindi
- porpoise family
- सूंस sūns
porpoise in Tamil
- கடற்பன்றி
porpoise in Telugu
- porpoise family
- నీరుపంది nīrupandi
porpoise in Malayalam
- ഡോൾഫിൻ വർഗ്ഗത്തിൽപ്പെട്ട ഒരു മത്സ്യം, കടൽപ്പന്നി, നീർകുരങ്ങ്
More languagesFewer languages
- porpoise in Kannada
- ಉಣಚಿ ಮೀನು
- porpoise in Gujarati
- શિશુમાર śiśumār
- porpoise in Tagalog
- marsopa
- porpoise in Arabic
- خِنْزِير الْبَحْر ḵinzīr al-baḥr
- porpoise in Persian
- گرازماهی gorâzmâhi, خوکماهی xuk-mâhi
- porpoise in Thai
- พอร์พอยส์ pɔɔ-pɔ́is
- porpoise in Vietnamese
- cá heo
Synonyms of porpoise
Forms of porpoise
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | porpoises |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | porpoises |
| present participle | porpoising |
| past participle | porpoised |
| past | porpoised |
Origin of porpoise
From Middle English porpeys, purpeys, borrowed from Anglo-Norman porpeis, purpeis, Old French pourpois, porpois, pourpais, porpeis (“porpoise”), from Vulgar Latin *porcopiscis (“porpoise”, literally “hog-fish”), taken from Latin porcus (“hog, pig”) + piscis (“fish”). Compare (in transposed order) obsolete Italian pesce porco and Portuguese peixe porco; also Latin porcus marīnus (“sea hog”); akin in formation to Frankish *mariswīn (“porpoise, dolphin”) (whence German Meerschwein, English mereswine). Displaced native Middle English brunswyn. More at mereswine.
Words formed from porpoise
Words that rhyme with porpoise
Questions about porpoise
- What does porpoise mean?
- Porpoise means a small cetacean of the family Phocoenidae, related to dolphins and whales.
- What is porpoise in Hindi?
- Porpoise in Hindi is सूंस (sūns). See Porpoise meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is porpoise?
- Porpoise can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce porpoise?
- Porpoise is pronounced /ˈpɔːpəs/ (UK).
- What is the plural of porpoise?
- The plural of porpoise is porpoises.
Words near porpoise in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: porpoise (page history and authors); porpoise (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); porpoise (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); porpoise (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); શિશુમાર (Gujarati) (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-us-porpoise.ogg.
Cite this entry: “porpoise.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/porpoise. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.