Cetacean

//sɪˈteɪʃən// adj, noun

adj, noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An animal belonging to the infraorder Cetacea, including dolphins, porpoises, and whales.

    "The tour promised spiritual experiences with humpback whales and other cetaceans, but all we saw were seagulls and a dead sea otter."

  2. 2
    large aquatic carnivorous mammal with fin-like forelimbs no hind limbs, including: whales, dolphins, porpoises, narwhals wordnet
Adjective
  1. 1
    Pertaining to the zoologic infraorder Cetacea, or associated with species falling under that taxonomic hierarchy.

    "The poached blubber was definitely cetacean in origin, but the particular species could not be identified."

  2. 2
    Resembling or relating to large aquatic mammals. broadly, figuratively, sometimes

    "The obese woman, ungainly on land, moved with a kind of cetacean grace in the water."

Adjective
  1. 1
    of or relating to whales and dolphins etc wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
alevinbaleen whalebelugabenthonbenthosblackfish

Example

More examples

"The poached blubber was definitely cetacean in origin, but the particular species could not be identified."

Etymology

From translingual Cetacea, from Latin cētus (“whale”), + -an.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.