whales

Noun

whale (plural whales)

1. Any large cetacean, usually with the exclusion of dolphins and porpoises.
   • Near-synonym: baleen (obsolete sense)

   Synonyms:

   baleen

2. (broadly) Any species of Cetacea, including dolphins and porpoises.
   • The dawn of the oil age was fairly recent. Although the stuff was used to waterproof boats in the Middle East 6,000 years ago, extracting it in earnest began only in 1859 after an oil strike in Pennsylvania.[…]It was used to make kerosene, the main fuel for artificial lighting after overfishing led...2013 August 3, “Yesterday’s fuel”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847, archived from the original on 26 Mar 2019

   Synonyms:

   cetacean

3. (figuratively) Something, or someone, that is very large.
   • It was a whale of a job. […] It took two months, and the fair blush of youth off my cheeks.1920 September, “A Reformed Free Lance” (pseudonym), “Doctoring a Sick Encyclopedia”, in The Writer, Volume XXXII, Number 9, page 131
4. (figuratively) Something, or someone, that is excellent.
   • My own father only wrote one poem in his life as far as I know, but it was a whale of a lyric, the kind you would give your whole life to write, which he did, but that is another story.2002, Kathleen Benson, Philip M. Kayal, Museum of the City of New York, A Community of Many Worlds: Arab Americans in New York City, Syracuse University Press →ISBN, page 54
5. (figuratively) A gambler who routinely wagers large amounts of money.
   • These are often no-limit games as maximum bets cramp a whale’s style.2003, Jeff Wuorio, How to Buy and Sell (Just About) Everything

   Synonyms:

   high roller

6. (figuratively, informal) An investor who deals with very large amounts of money.
   • If the banks knew how big Archegos’s position was, they may have realized other banks were supplying it with the same leverage — and reconsidered the trade. But a set of worrisome regulatory loopholes kept them from detecting this lurking whale.2021 May 18, Alexis Goldstein, “These Invisible Whales Could Sink the Economy”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

See all 12 meanings of whale