Word.ws English Dictionary

whale line

whale line noun: a thick rope connecting a harpoon to the line tub.

Noun

whale line (plural whale lines)

  1. A thick rope connecting a harpoon to the line tub
    • The involuntary consternation of the moment caused him to leap, paddle in hand, out of the boat; and in such a way, that part of the slack whale line coming against his chest, he breasted it overboard with him, so as to become entangled in it, when at last plumping into the water.1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “The Castaway”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC

Forms of whale line

pluralwhale lines
alternative formwhaleline

Origin of whale line

From whale + line.

Questions about whale line

What does whale line mean?
Whale line means a thick rope connecting a harpoon to the line tub.
What part of speech is whale line?
Whale line is a noun.
What is the plural of whale line?
The plural of whale line is whale lines.

Words near whale line in the dictionary

  1. whale fall
  2. whale falls
  3. whale fisher
  4. whale fishers
  5. whale lice
  6. whale line
  7. whale louse
  8. whale oil
  9. whale oils
  10. whale on
  11. whale safari

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: whale line (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:

Cite this entry: “whale line.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/whale_line. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.