Word.ws English Dictionary

whale's way

whale's way noun: the ocean.

Noun

the whale's way

  1. (literary, kenning) The ocean.
    • Beowulf answered the queen, “I wished that when I had let float my sea-wood on the whale's way, when I set sail with my war-band, to answer with my life the challenge of Grendel.”1961, Norma Lorre Goodrich, “Beowulf”, in The Medieval Myths, New York: The New American Library, page 28
    • A long season we spent on the whale's way, with the wind biting through our tunics[.]2002, Juliet Marillier, Wolfskin, Sydney: Pan Macmillan Australia, page 9

Synonyms of whale's way

Origin of whale's way

Calque of Old English hranrād, from hran (“whale”) + rād (“road, way”).

Questions about whale's way

What does whale's way mean?
Whale's way means the ocean.
What part of speech is whale's way?
Whale's way is a noun.

Words near whale's way in the dictionary

  1. whale watches
  2. whale watching
  3. whale's guide
  4. whale's road
  5. whale's tail
  6. whale's way
  7. whale-backed
  8. whale-fisher
  9. whale-fishers
  10. whale-path
  11. whale-road

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: whale's way (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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