Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A whale.

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

  • noun Any fish of the Cetomimiformes order of ray-finned fish.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Cetomimidae, a type of whalefish, had been known since the 19th century, but only females had been found.

    January 23rd, 2009 m_francis 2009

  • Cetomimidae, a type of whalefish, had been known since the 19th century, but only females had been found.

    three fish, one and the same | clusterflock 2009

  • An interesting case where male, female, and larval forms of deep-sea whalefish were separated into three different families, and now resolved.

    Archive 2009-01-01 2009

  • Cetomimidae, a type of whalefish, had been known since the 19th century, but only females had been found.

    three fish, one and the same | clusterflock 2009

  • There's a whale, there's a whale, there's a whalefish, he cried

    Greenland Whale Fisheries Gilbert/Hays/Hellerman/Seeger 1986

  • "Leviathan is the great whalefish or seadragon, so called of the fast joyning together of his scales as he is described Job 40: 20, 41 and is used to resemble great tyrants."

    Sabbath in Puritan New England Alice Morse Earle 1881

  • A bignose fish is a male whalefish, and the tapetails and hairyfish are the larvae.

    James Randi Educational Foundation 2009

  • The larval whalefish are even stranger (upper image with inset of body in close-up).

    Ugly Overload 2009

  • Male (lower image, top) and female (lower image, bottom) whalefish look so different that researchers have only now recognized that the two belong in the same family.

    Ugly Overload 2009

  • Three deep-sea fish that few people ever see: the bignose fish, the whalefish, and the tapetails (including hairyfish) were studied.

    James Randi Educational Foundation 2009

Comments

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  • "The lookout, in the crosstrees he stood/With spyglass in his hand;/There's a whale, there's a whale,/And a whalefish he cried,/And she blows at every span..." -- "Greenland Whale Fisheries," traditional, arranged by the Pogues, c. 1985.

    Plural: whalefishes. Usage: "Oh Greenland is a barren land/A land that bears no green/Where there's ice and snow, and the whalefishes blow,/And the daylight's seldom seen..." (citation above)

    February 6, 2007

  • Fish!

    November 7, 2008

  • That's what was thought a long time ago, yes.

    November 7, 2008