whaler
UK/ˈweɪlə/US/ˈweɪlɚ/
whaler noun: one who hunts whales; any person employed in the whaling industry.
Noun
whaler (plural whalers)
- One who hunts whales; any person employed in the whaling industry.
- Near-synonym: whaleman
- For a whaler's wife to have been “ 'round the Cape” half a dozen times, or even more, was nothing extraordinary.1890, Century Illustrated Magazine, XL, 511
- Synonyms:
- whaleman
- A seagoing vessel used for hunting whales.
- Near-synonym: whaleship
- But o' Thursday t' Resolution, first whaler back this season, came in port.1863, Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, Sylvia's Lovers, section V
- Synonyms:
- whaleship
- One who whales (flogs or beats).
- A large, strong person.
- Something of unusually great size, a whopper, a whacker.
- Any shark of the family Carcharhinidae; a requiem shark.
- The whalers (or requiem sharks) are one of the largest and best known family of sharks. Worldwide there are 48 species in 12 genera. However, relatively few species are on the Great Barrier Reef.1997, John Ernest Randall, Gerald R Allen, Roger C. Steene, Fishes of the Great Barrier Reef, 2nd edition, page 17
- The whaler shark family, which includes the grey reef shark (Carcharhinus amblyrhynchos),silvertip (Carcharhinus albimarginatus), bull shark (Carcharhinus leucas) and bronze whaler (Carcharhinus brachyurus) are fast moving, territorial and have bitten divers snd surfers in the past.2003, Mark Thornley, Veda Dante, Peter Wilson, Action Guide: Surfing Australia, Tuttle Publishing, HK, page 264
- A sundowner; one who cruises about.
- the nomad, “the whaler,” it is who will find the new order hostile to his vested interest of doing nothing.1893 August 12, Sydney Morning Herald
Proper noun capitalized: Whaler
Whaler (plural Whalers)
- A surname.
Examples of whaler in a sentence
- Over eight hundred Chamorro whalers settled in Honolulu.2001, Lawrence J. Cunningham, Janice J. Beaty, A History of Guam, page 170:
- The brewing conflict between locals and the whalers prompted then-sheriff Ari Magnússon to draw up a decree that allowed Basques to be killed with impunity in the district.2015 April 29, Ashifa Kassam, “Basques safe in Iceland as district repeals decree to kill them on sight”, in The Guardian, archived from...
- Making myself at home with him, I desired to know what brought him so far from the "big smoke," and on board a whaler of all places in the world.1898, Frank Thomas Bullen, The Cruise of the Cachalot:
- The log of the Emily Morgan, an American whaler that visited Guam many times, described Spanish control:[…].1995, Robert F. Rogers, Destiny's Landfall: A History of Guam, page 98:
Synonyms of whaler
Forms of whaler
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | whalers |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Whalers |
Origin of whaler
From whale + -er. In sense 1, displaced Old English hwælhunta (literally “whale hunter”).
Variant of Wheeler.
Words formed from whaler
Words that rhyme with whaler
Questions about whaler
- What does whaler mean?
- Whaler means one who hunts whales; any person employed in the whaling industry.
- How do you use whaler in a sentence?
- Over eight hundred Chamorro whalers settled in Honolulu.
- What part of speech is whaler?
- Whaler can be a noun or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce whaler?
- Whaler is pronounced /ˈweɪlə/ (UK).
- What is the plural of whaler?
- The plural of whaler is whalers.
Words near whaler in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: whaler (page history and authors); Whaler (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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-whaler.ogg.
Cite this entry: “whaler.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/whaler. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.