white whale
/waɪt ˈweɪl/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.97 in modern English
22
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
1
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Synonym of beluga (“the beluga whale, Delphinapterus leucas, a cetacean found in the Arctic Ocean”)
noun
Any whale of the family Monodontidae, which comprises the beluga whales and narwhals (Monodon monoceros), and some extinct species.
noun
A printing plate, used to manufacture a particular sports card, that is then issued as a collectible itself.
Example Sentences
- "The English called the beluga the "white whale", a name often still used (and not to be confused with the white whale of Moby-Dick, which was an albino sperm whale)."
- "No … no sapphires. It looks like Lester Velasquez was chasing his white whale. There never were any sapphires inside that diner."
- "For nearly four years, Snapchat has been Facebook’s white whale."
- "After being lofted into space by a Falcon Super Heavy, his next rocket, the Starship, will light out for the moon, land there, take off and return to Earth, with no stages expended on the lunar journey. This so-called single-stage-to-orbit model has been the white whale of rocket designers for generations."
Etymology
From white + whale. The figurative senses refer to the novel Moby-Dick (1851) by the American writer Herman Melville (1819–1891), in which Captain Ahab relentlessly pursues a rare albino sperm whale.