white whale

noun

1

: beluga sense 2

2

or less commonly great white whale : something (such as a goal or object) that is obsessively pursued

It was the old man's white whale, the holy grail shining at the end of the dream, on and off the rails, as he chased scripts, directors, and movie stars of the proper magnitude.

—Rich Cohen

For drug makers, developing the first Alzheimer's therapy has long been seen as the great white whale: the toughest challenge and biggest opportunity.

—Robert Weisman

Illustration of white whale

• white whale 1

Examples of white whale in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Removing the sales tax from fuel sales has been the elusive white whale in decades of road funding discussions. —Paul Egan, Freep.com, 26 Sep. 2025

Karen Read is Meatball’s white whale. —Howie Carr, Boston Herald, 24 Sep. 2025

Pynchon’s daunting masterpiece, a white whale of a Great American Novel, is stuffed with pun-tastic songs, rocket science and World War II-era occultism. —John Lopez, HollywoodReporter, 6 Sep. 2025

In 2022, Preller landed a white whale; Juan Soto, in San Diego, turned out to be more above-average than extraordinary. —Dennis Lin, New York Times, 26 July 2025

Word History

Etymology

(sense 2) after the white sperm whale obsessively hunted by Captain Ahab in Herman Melville's novel Moby Dick (1851)

First Known Use

1635, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for white whale

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