Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The zoology of whales and related aquatic mammals.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The description or natural history of cetaceous animals.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The description or natural history of cetaceous animals.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun The branch of
zoology concerned with theorder Cetacea , which includeswhales ,dolphins , andporpoises .
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word cetology.
Examples
-
The cetology chapter is just there to weed out the easily discouraged.
Well, it's not like there's an election or financial crisis or anything. Roger Sutton 2008
-
Yes, yes, the cetology (and faux cetology) can be a slog, no doubt.
So now will I have to read it? It's not like they did. Roger Sutton 2007
-
As far as the cetology section goes, a little taxonomy never hurt anyone.
So now will I have to read it? It's not like they did. Roger Sutton 2007
-
Ishmael would speak for them at midcentury in Moby Dick, as he dismissed learned commentary on cetology, called on Jonah and seamen with callused hands for support and declared the whale a spouting fish with a horizontal tail.
Thar She Blows! 19th-Century Court Case Harpoons a Whale of a Story 2007
-
Therefore you must not, in every case at least, take the higgledy-piggledy whale statements, however authentic, in these extracts, for veritable gospel cetology.
Call me Ishmael Young Geoffrion 2007
-
Therefore you must not, in every case at least, take the higgledy-piggledy whale statements, however authentic, in these extracts, for veritable gospel cetology.
Archive 2007-10-01 Young Geoffrion 2007
-
Nevertheless, though of real knowledge there be little, yet of books there are a plenty; and so in some small degree, with cetology, or the science of whales.
-
My object here is simply to project the draught of a systematization of cetology.
-
It will be seen that this mere painstaking burrower and grub-worm of a poor devil of a Sub-Sub appears to have gone through the long Vaticans and street-stalls of the earth, picking up whatever random allusions to whales he could anyways find in any book whatsoever, sacred or profane. therefore you must not, in every case at least, take the higgledy-piggledy whale statements, however authentic, in these extracts, for veritable gospel cetology.
-
As the external difference between them is mainly observable in their heads; and as a head of each is this moment hanging from the Pequod's side; and as we may freely go from one to the other, by merely stepping across the deck: -- where, I should like to know, will you obtain a better chance to study practical cetology than here?
Moby Dick, or, the whale Herman Melville 1855
Comments
Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.