whaling
Americannoun
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the work or industry of capturing and rendering whales; whale fishing.
-
Digital Technology. a phishing attempt by someone posing as a company’s attorney, CEO, vendor, or other authorized entity in order to scam a payroll department, corporate executive, etc., out of money or confidential information.
The source of the whaling gave all appearances of legitimacy and trustworthiness.
noun
adverb
Other Word Forms
- antiwhaling adjective
Etymology
Origin of whaling
whale 1 + -ing 1; whaling def. 1 was first recorded in 1680–90; whaling def. 2 in 2010–15 (in the sense “hunting for a big fish/phish”)
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.
California’s gray whales have been considered an environmental success story since the passage of the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act and 1986’s global ban on commercial whaling.
From Los Angeles Times
Shetlander Helen Balfour is the assistant curator at the South Georgia Museum in Grytviken, one of the island's former whaling stations.
From BBC
The connections it traces are fascinating—the unexpected role of Quakers in both the Birmingham gun factories and the whaling industry, for instance.
It had once been a whaling village, and the humble buildings retained a rustic charm, though when Watson arrived the rustic quality was on a steep descent toward ruination.
From Los Angeles Times
The robot’s computer brain retrieved information on the history of whaling, and she calculated the shark’s age to be over five hundred years.
From Literature
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.
