Ahab
Americannoun
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Bible. a king of Israel and husband of Jezebel, reigned 874?–853? b.c. null Achab
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Literature. the captain of the ship Pequod and tragic hero of Melville's Moby Dick, obsessed with the pursuit of the white whale.
noun
Etymology
Origin of Ahab
From Hebrew Aḥʾābh, probably “father's brother”
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Sports Illustrated may have deemed Turner “Terrible Ted” on its cover, but on the ocean, the skipper wasn’t an Ahab.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 7, 2026
Then Elliott pointed out the open side of the bus toward the corner of Sunset and Doheny like Ahab spotting Moby Dick.
From Los Angeles Times • Nov. 16, 2023
To my relief, the directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, working with the screenwriter Julia Cox, trace Diana’s mythic roots not just to the naiads, but to zealots like Captain Ahab.
From New York Times • Nov. 2, 2023
“And she’s Captain Ahab and she wants to get the big whale. She ain’t gonna get the big whale. She’ll go down. The big whale will laugh at her.”
From Washington Times • Jun. 14, 2023
Ishmael was all right, but Ahab he could not respect and this ultimately undermined the book for him.
From "Snow Falling on Cedars: A Novel" by David Guterson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
