See white whale in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
Download JSON data for white whale meaning in English (8.5kB)
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"etymology_text": "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.",
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"ref": "2007, Nancy Lord, “Prologue”, in Beluga Days: Tracking the Endangered White Whale, pages 22–23",
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"type": "quotation"
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],
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"Synonym of beluga (“the beluga whale (Delphinapterus leucas), a cetacean found in the Arctic Ocean”)"
],
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{
"word": "melonhead"
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{
"word": "sea canary"
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],
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[
"Monodontidae",
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],
[
"narwhal",
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"Monodon monoceros",
"Monodon monoceros#Translingual"
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[
"extinct",
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"translations": [
{
"_dis1": "21 75 0 4",
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "any whale of the family Monodontidae",
"word": "sarvivalas"
},
{
"_dis1": "21 75 0 4",
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "any whale of the family Monodontidae",
"word": "valkovalas"
},
{
"_dis1": "21 75 0 4",
"code": "gl",
"lang": "Galician",
"sense": "any whale of the family Monodontidae",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "cetáceo monodóntido"
},
{
"_dis1": "21 75 0 4",
"code": "mk",
"lang": "Macedonian",
"roman": "nárval",
"sense": "any whale of the family Monodontidae",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "на́рвал"
}
]
},
{
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{
"ref": "2008, Glen Inglis, Broken Heroes, page 228",
"text": "No … no sapphires. It looks like Lester Velasquez was chasing his white whale. There never were any sapphires inside that diner.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2016 August 2, Mike Isaac, “Instagram takes a page from Snapchat, and takes aim at it, too”, in The New York Times, →ISSN",
"text": "For nearly four years, Snapchat has been Facebook’s white whale.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2021 December 13, Molly Ball, Jeffrey Kluger, Alejandro de la Garza, “Elon Musk: Person of the Year 2021”, in Time Magazine",
"text": "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.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"An obsession, a monomania."
],
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"obsession",
"obsession"
],
[
"monomania",
"monomania"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(figuratively)",
"An obsession, a monomania."
],
"tags": [
"figuratively"
]
},
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "topical",
"langcode": "en",
"name": "Collectible card games",
"orig": "en:Collectible card games",
"parents": [
"Card games",
"Games",
"Recreation",
"Human activity",
"Human behaviour",
"Human",
"All topics",
"Fundamental"
],
"source": "w"
},
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],
"glosses": [
"A printing plate, used to manufacture a particular sports card, that is then issued as a collectible itself."
],
"id": "en-white_whale-en-noun-zNbuXsrg",
"links": [
[
"printing",
"printing"
],
[
"plate",
"plate"
],
[
"manufacture",
"manufacture#Verb"
],
[
"sports card",
"sports card"
],
[
"issued",
"issue#Verb"
],
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],
"qualifier": "collectible card games",
"raw_glosses": [
"(figuratively)",
"(collectible card games) A printing plate, used to manufacture a particular sports card, that is then issued as a collectible itself."
],
"tags": [
"figuratively"
],
"translations": [
{
"_dis1": "6 4 1 90",
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "printing plate used to manufacture a particular sports card, that is then issued as a collectible itself",
"word": "painolaatta"
},
{
"_dis1": "6 4 1 90",
"code": "mk",
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"roman": "pečátarska plóča",
"sense": "printing plate used to manufacture a particular sports card, that is then issued as a collectible itself",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "печа́тарска пло́ча"
}
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"ipa": "/waɪt ˈweɪl/",
"tags": [
"Received-Pronunciation"
]
},
{
"ipa": "/ʍaɪt ˈʍeɪl/",
"tags": [
"General-American"
]
},
{
"rhymes": "-eɪl"
},
{
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"tags": [
"Southern-England"
],
"text": "Audio (Southern England)"
}
],
"wikipedia": [
"Captain Ahab",
"Herman Melville",
"Moby-Dick"
],
"word": "white whale"
}
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"ref": "2007, Nancy Lord, “Prologue”, in Beluga Days: Tracking the Endangered White Whale, pages 22–23",
"text": "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).",
"type": "quotation"
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],
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"word": "melonhead"
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{
"word": "sea canary"
},
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"extra": "(“the beluga whale (Delphinapterus leucas), a cetacean found in the Arctic Ocean”)",
"tags": [
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"Any whale of the family Monodontidae, which comprises the beluga whales and narwhals (Monodon monoceros), and some extinct species."
],
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[
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[
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[
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"text": "No … no sapphires. It looks like Lester Velasquez was chasing his white whale. There never were any sapphires inside that diner.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2016 August 2, Mike Isaac, “Instagram takes a page from Snapchat, and takes aim at it, too”, in The New York Times, →ISSN",
"text": "For nearly four years, Snapchat has been Facebook’s white whale.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2021 December 13, Molly Ball, Jeffrey Kluger, Alejandro de la Garza, “Elon Musk: Person of the Year 2021”, in Time Magazine",
"text": "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.",
"type": "quotation"
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],
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"An obsession, a monomania."
],
"links": [
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],
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]
],
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"(figuratively)",
"An obsession, a monomania."
],
"tags": [
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]
},
{
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"ipa": "/waɪt ˈweɪl/",
"tags": [
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]
},
{
"ipa": "/ʍaɪt ˈʍeɪl/",
"tags": [
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},
{
"rhymes": "-eɪl"
},
{
"audio": "LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-white whale.wav",
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"tags": [
"Southern-England"
],
"text": "Audio (Southern England)"
}
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "any whale of the family Monodontidae",
"word": "sarvivalas"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "any whale of the family Monodontidae",
"word": "valkovalas"
},
{
"code": "gl",
"lang": "Galician",
"sense": "any whale of the family Monodontidae",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "cetáceo monodóntido"
},
{
"code": "mk",
"lang": "Macedonian",
"roman": "nárval",
"sense": "any whale of the family Monodontidae",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "на́рвал"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "printing plate used to manufacture a particular sports card, that is then issued as a collectible itself",
"word": "painolaatta"
},
{
"code": "mk",
"lang": "Macedonian",
"roman": "pečátarska plóča",
"sense": "printing plate used to manufacture a particular sports card, that is then issued as a collectible itself",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "печа́тарска пло́ча"
}
],
"wikipedia": [
"Captain Ahab",
"Herman Melville",
"Moby-Dick"
],
"word": "white whale"
}
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-30 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (210104c and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.