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Humpback   Listen
noun
Humpback  n.  
1.
A crooked back; a humped back.
2.
A humpbacked person; a hunchback.
3.
(Zool.)
(a)
Any whale of the genus Megaptera, characterized by a hump or bunch on the back. Several species are known. The most common ones in the North Atlantic are Megaptera longimana of Europe, and Megaptera osphyia of America; that of the California coasts is Megaptera versabilis.
(b)
A small salmon (Oncorhynchus gorbuscha), of the northwest coast of America; the humpbacked salmon.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Humpback" Quotes from Famous Books



... knew him, and knew how when he was not over thirteen, just the age of little Raoul the humpback, who was not as tall as Pauline, he had received the cross which he always wore over his heart sewed in the breast of his coat, from the hand of the emperor himself, for standing on the hill at Wagram ...
— "A Soldier Of The Empire" - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page

... his back, takes me by the shoulders, and slews me round. 'What are you 'bout?' says he. Slid! man, but I was frightened. Such a phiz! But, somehow, next moment I was over the fright. 'What am I about?' says I at last. 'And what business is that of yours, I should like to know, Mr. Humpback? Do YOU want a kick?' By the lord, Flask, I had no sooner said that, than he turned round his stern to me, bent over, and dragging up a lot of seaweed he had for a clout—what do you think, I saw?—why thunder alive, man, his stern was stuck full of marlinspikes, with the points ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... American Review" in defence of its use. Willis was fond of it. As a relief to monotony it may be now and then allowed,—may even have an agreeable effect in breaking the monotony of too formal verse. But it may easily become a deformity and a cause of aversion. A humpback may add picturesqueness to a procession, but if there are too many humpbacks in line we turn away from the sight of them. Can any ear reconcile itself to the last of these three lines ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... Sandy—merry of heart—a humpback laddie from Aberdeen. His parents had gone down with the steerage of a great ocean liner, and society had cared for him until the first horror of the tragedy had passed; then some one fortunately had mentioned Saint Margaret's, ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer



Words linked to "Humpback" :   baleen whale, Megaptera novaeangliae, crookback, hunchback, spinal curvature, Megaptera



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