Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun One that hunts or processes whales.
  • noun A whaling ship.
  • noun A whaleboat.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Something whaling, or big or extraordinary of its kind; a whopper; a whacker.
  • noun The name given in Sydney to the shark, Carcharias brachyurus, Günth. E. E. Morris, Austral English.
  • noun A sundowner; one who cruises about.
  • noun A person or a vessel engaged in the business of capturing whales.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A vessel or person employed in the whale fishery.
  • noun Colloq. U. S. One who whales, or beats; a big, strong fellow; hence, anything of great or unusual size.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun One who hunts whales; a person employed in the whaling industry.
  • noun A seagoing vessel used for hunting whales.
  • noun One who whales (flogs or beats).
  • noun slang A large, strong person.
  • noun slang Something of unusually great size, a whopper, a whacker.
  • noun Australia Any shark of the family Carcharhinidae; a requiem shark.
  • noun Australian slang, dated A sundowner; one who cruises about.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a seaman who works on a ship that hunts whales
  • noun a ship engaged in whale fishing

Etymologies

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Examples

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  • "Make a show of resistance, panicky and disorganized, like a whaler might... Present company excepted, Mister Hogg." --Captain Aubrey, "Master and Commander"

    February 21, 2007