PORPOISE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Porpoise

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/pˈɔrpəs/ Listen

noun

Porpoise n.

(Zool.) Any small cetacean of the genus Phocaena, especially Phocaena communis, or Phocaena phocaena, of Europe, and the closely allied American species (Phocaena Americana). The color is dusky or blackish above, paler beneath. They are closely allied to the dolphins, but have a shorter snout. Called also harbor porpoise, herring hag, puffing pig, and snuffer.

(Zool.) A true dolphin (Delphinus); often so called by sailors.

Skunk porpoise, or Bay porpoise (Zool.), a North American porpoise (Lagenorhynchus acutus), larger than the common species, and with broad stripes of white and yellow on the sides.

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Etymology of 'Porpoise'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Porpoise" Quotes from Famous Books

... the rounded forehead and projecting muzzle of which its own bullet head and bill exactly correspond. In its plunge, if you watch it bathing, you may see it dip its breast just as much under the water as a porpoise shows its back above. You can only rightly describe the bird by the resemblances, and images of what it seems to have changed from,—then adding the fantastic and beautiful contrast of the unimaginable change. It is an owl that has been trained ...

— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin

... emergency of that kind except a small bucket of slush, with which, however, it would be practicable to "douse his glim." This great man, with his attendant, was bound for the sea-baths of Revel, where he would doubtless soon be buffeting the waves like a porpoise—or possibly, in virtue of the commanding powers vested in him by nature and the Czar of Russia, would sit down by the sea-shore like Hardicanute the Dane, and order the waves ...

— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... The porpoise is a long, sleek fish without scales, black on the back, and white and gray beneath. He is from four to ten feet in length, and his sociability and good-nature are proverbial among ...

— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various

... sir, etymologically is 'un grand poisson,' but, biologically, it is no fish at all, being a mammal, mid-way between a dolphin and a porpoise." ...

— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... an old porpoise, and I believe it all owing to you that my husband neglects his wife and family. What's vampyres to him, I should like to know, that he should go troubling about them? I never heard of vampyres taking ...

— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

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