whalebones
whalebones is the plural of whalebone.
Meaning of whalebone
Noun
whalebone (countable and uncountable, plural whalebones)
- The horny material from the fringed plates of the upper jaw of baleen whales that is used to filter plankton; once used as stays in corsets
- “You have probably never seen anything like this before, Mr. Toler. It is baleen, or if you prefer it, whalebone, taken from the mouth of the bowhead whale. It is used by the whale to filter its food.”1954, Alexander Alderson, chapter 5, in The Subtle Minotaur
- Synonyms:
- baleen
Questions about whalebones
- What is whalebones the plural of?
- Whalebones is the plural of whalebone.
Words near whalebones in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: whalebones (page history and authors); whalebone (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: “whalebones.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/whalebones. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
