Word.ws English Dictionary

whalebird

whalebird noun: any of several species of large Antarctic petrels, especially Pachyptila turtur (the blue petrel) and Pachyptila desolata.

Noun

whalebird (plural whalebirds)

  1. Any of several species of large Antarctic petrels, especially Pachyptila turtur (the blue petrel) and Pachyptila desolata.
  2. (Australia) The sooty tern

Forms of whalebird

pluralwhalebirds

Origin of whalebird

From whale + bird, because they have been known to follow whaling vessels to feed on the blubber and floating oil.

Questions about whalebird

What does whalebird mean?
Whalebird means any of several species of large Antarctic petrels, especially Pachyptila turtur (the blue petrel) and Pachyptila desolata.
What part of speech is whalebird?
Whalebird is a noun.
What is the plural of whalebird?
The plural of whalebird is whalebirds.

Words near whalebird in the dictionary

  1. whale-path
  2. whale-road
  3. whale-roads
  4. whaleback
  5. whalebacks
  6. whalebird
  7. whalebirds
  8. whaleboat
  9. whaleboater
  10. whaleboaters
  11. whaleboats

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: whalebird (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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Cite this entry: “whalebird.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/whalebird. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.