beluga
Americannoun
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Also called hausen. a white sturgeon, Huso huso, of the Black and Caspian seas, valued as a source of caviar and isinglass.
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Also called sea canary, white whale. a cetacean, Delphinapterus leucas, of northern seas, that has a rounded head and is white when adult.
noun
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a large white sturgeon, Acipenser (or Huso ) huso , of the Black and Caspian Seas: a source of caviar and isinglass
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another name for white whale
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of beluga
1585–95; < Russian belúga (now regularly belúkha for the cetacean), equivalent to bél ( yĭ ) white + -uga, probably earlier *-ǫga (compare Czech pstruh, Polish pstrąg trout < *pĭstr- mottled + *-ǫgŭ a cognate suffix)
Vocabulary lists containing beluga
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.
See Examples For:
Over a period of 13 years, researchers collected small tissue samples from 623 beluga whales.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 4, 2026
Restaurants discarded over 50 pounds of beluga caviar likely worth tens of thousands of dollars, one said.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 6, 2026
Marineland has said all the beluga deaths at the park resulted from natural causes, but animal welfare officials from the province of Ontario have been investigating the park for several years.
From Barron's ● Jan. 26, 2026
Amid financial struggles, the park has been trying to get permission to sell 30 beluga whales to China.
From BBC ● Oct. 11, 2025
“So over here is the cold-water experience, with your penguins and beluga whales and whatnot. And over there...well, those are some fish, obviously.”
From "The Mark of Athena" by Rick Riordan
They are part of a large pod of 30 belugas living at Marineland of Canada that need to be rehomed.
From BBC ● Jul. 22, 2026
The genetic profiling revealed that female belugas regularly switch mates across breeding seasons, also over a long reproductive life.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 4, 2026
The findings suggest that both male and female belugas reproduce with multiple partners over the course of their lives.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 4, 2026
Burgess stressed the belugas need a decent home and Marineland was clearly not a solution.
From Barron's ● Nov. 26, 2025
What happened when all the new animals in the north killed off the arctic foxes and belugas and narwhals and polar bears that already lived there?
From "Two Degrees" by Alan Gratz
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.
