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

The perfect peach is my white whale of summer produce. —Aaron Hutcherson, Washington Post, 15 July 2024

If there's that one white whale item that's been evading you, these are the places to find it. —Heather Bien, Southern Living, 12 July 2024

Given its complexity, frequent painfulness, mysterious etiology, and lack of a cure, the disease is a research white whale. —Seyward Darby, Longreads, 27 June 2024

But this book became my white whale and I got caught in a wide net of symbolic details and thematic statements that sank me. —Jay Nordlinger, National Review, 28 May 2024

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