Word.ws English Dictionary

whalefall

whalefall noun: a whale carcass that has fallen to the ocean floor.

Noun

whalefall (plural whalefalls)

  1. A whale carcass that has fallen to the ocean floor.
    • But the ocean floor is not exactly wall-to-wall whalefalls.2007 December 18, Henry Fountain, “Whales Are Tasty, but Bone-Eating Worms Might Not Discriminate”, in New York Times

Forms of whalefall

pluralwhalefalls

Origin of whalefall

From whale + fall, possibly modelled after snowfall. Compare also marine snow.

Questions about whalefall

What does whalefall mean?
Whalefall means a whale carcass that has fallen to the ocean floor.
What part of speech is whalefall?
Whalefall is a noun.
What is the plural of whalefall?
The plural of whalefall is whalefalls.

Words near whalefall in the dictionary

  1. whalecraft
  2. whaled
  3. whaled away
  4. whaled on
  5. whaledom
  6. whalefall
  7. whalefalls
  8. whalefeed
  9. whalefish
  10. whalefisher
  11. whalefishers

Source and license

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