humpback whale

Definition of humpback whale

: a large baleen whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) that is black above and white below and has very long flippers, and fleshy tubercles along the snout

Examples of humpback whale in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web Interspersed between our expeditions (and pivotal to the routine) was the captain’s gentle voice, cutting off conversations to share the sighting of a humpback whale waving its fluke or a minke whale coyly nudging up against the bow. — Danielle Bernabe, Fortune, "A first-person look at sailing through Antarctica amid climate change," 1 July 2020 Members of a family were seriously injured after their boat collided with a humpback whale outside of Auke Bay over the weekend. — CBS News, "3 family members injured when boat collides with humpback whale in Alaska," 1 July 2020 The humpback whale is federally protected and one of the largest of the baleen whales. — Lauren M. Johnson, CNN, "A family was injured after their boat collided with a whale off the coast of Alaska," 30 June 2020 Two occupants of a small boat off the coast of New Jersey were knocked overboard on Monday after getting hit by what believed was humpback whale that breached the surface while apparently searching for food. — Fox News, "Breaching whale knocks small boat ‘out of the water’ off New Jersey," 9 June 2020 Machine-learning applications are helping scientists sift through an ocean’s worth of data to monitor, study and track wildlife like humpback whales. — Lara Takenaga, New York Times, "Bernie Sanders, Coronavirus, Passover: Your Wednesday Evening Briefing," 8 Apr. 2020 Granger is now analyzing another set of data that tracked the movements of a pod of humpback whales over 12 years. — Ed Yong, The Atlantic, "The Strange Influence the Sun Has on Whales," 24 Feb. 2020 Many humpback whale populations, previously devastated by commercial whaling, are making a comeback. — Dr. Kirsten Thompson, Time, "Humpback Whales Have Made a Remarkable Recovery, Giving Us Hope for the Planet," 16 May 2020 Fifty years ago, the biologist Robert Payne first eavesdropped on a humpback whale community and heard whale song. — Alexandra Horowitz, New York Times, "Checking In on the Culture of Macaws, Sperm Whales and Chimpanzees," 14 Apr. 2020

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'humpback whale.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

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Dictionary Entries near humpback whale

humpback salmon

humpback sucker

Statistics for humpback whale

Last Updated

9 Jul 2020

Cite this Entry

“Humpback whale.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/humpback%20whale. Accessed 11 Jul. 2020.

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