Word.ws English Dictionary

whaling on

whaling on is the present participle and gerund of whale on.

Meaning of whale on

Verb

whale on (third-person singular simple present whales on, present participle whaling on, simple past and past participle whaled on)

  1. (slang) To strike an opponent heavily and repeatedly in a fight.
    • If he had been able to break loose from his handlers and the referee, he would have jumped Paret to the floor and whaled on him there.1962, Norman Mailer, The Death of Benny Paret
  2. (slang) To beat heavily on anything.
    • The wrench wouldn’t budge, even though Tony was just whaling on it with a big old sledge hammer.

Questions about whaling on

What is whaling on the present participle and gerund of?
Whaling on is the present participle and gerund of whale on.

Words near whaling on in the dictionary

  1. Whaley
  2. Whaley Bridge
  3. Whaleys
  4. whaling
  5. whaling away
  6. whaling on
  7. whaling station
  8. whaling stations
  9. whalings
  10. whalish
  11. Whall

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: whaling on (page history and authors); whale on (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: “whaling on.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/whaling_on. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.