beaked whale

noun

: any of a family (Ziphiidae) of toothed whales that have a relatively long, narrow snout suggestive of a beak, that in the males often have a large bulging forehead, and that unlike other whales lack a notch on the fluke

Note: Beaked whales lack teeth in the upper jaw. Typically, female beaked whales also lack functional teeth in the lower jaw while male whales have one to two pairs of small tusklike teeth in the lower jaw. Beaked whales feed chiefly on deepwater squid.

Examples of beaked whale in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Most of the 485 fossils the scientists catalogued were from different species of beaked whales. — CBS News, 10 June 2026

Most of the whale fossils come from several species of deep-diving beaked whales. — Laura Baisas, Popular Science, 10 June 2026

The ginkgo-toothed beaked whales are so rare that, until this voyage, there were no photos of the species alive in the wild, only shots of dead ginkgo-toothed beaked whales found on beaches. — Kelli Bender, PEOPLE, 21 Nov. 2025

Researchers are still discovering evidence of new beaked whale species, with the most recent find occurring in 2021, per The Guardian. — Kelli Bender, PEOPLE, 21 Nov. 2025

Word History

First Known Use

1755, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for beaked whale

• abigail
• cottontail
• countervail
• fingernail
• martingale
• mesoscale
• microscale
• monorail
• nanoscale
• ponytail
• swallowtail
• wensleydale