Word.ws English Dictionary

wave washing

wave washing noun: a form of hunting used by some pods of orcas to drive a prey animal (such as a seal) seeking refuge on a sheet of ice into the water, in which members of the pod swim together at high speed towards the sheet to create a powerful wave that breaks it up.

Noun

wave washing (uncountable)

  1. (marine biology) A form of hunting used by some pods of orcas to drive a prey animal (such as a seal) seeking refuge on a sheet of ice into the water, in which members of the pod swim together at high speed towards the sheet to create a powerful wave that breaks it up.

Forms of wave washing

alternative formwavewashing

Origin of wave washing

From wave + washing (“move or erode by the force of water”).

Questions about wave washing

What does wave washing mean?
Wave washing means a form of hunting used by some pods of orcas to drive a prey animal (such as a seal) seeking refuge on a sheet of ice into the water, in which members of the pod swim together at high speed towards the sheet to create a powerful wave that breaks it up.
What part of speech is wave washing?
Wave washing is a noun.

Words near wave washing in the dictionary

  1. wave train
  2. wave trains
  3. wave turn
  4. wave vector
  5. wave vectors
  6. wave washing
  7. wave-like
  8. wave-mechanical
  9. wave-particle
  10. wave-particle duality
  11. wave-particles

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wave washing (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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