whale-fisher

English

Alternative forms

• whalefisher, whale fisher

Noun

whale-fisher (plural whale-fishers)

1. One who hunts whales.
   • 1822, Walter Scott, The Pirate:

     At the first sound, Swertha fell into an agreeable dream of a young whale-fisher, who some forty years before used to make such a signal beneath the window of her hut; at the second, she waked to remember that Johnnie Fea had slept sound among the frozen waves of Greenland for this many a year, and that she was Mr. Mertoun's governante at Jarlshof; at the third, she arose and oened the window.

   • 1878, Jules Verne, Dick Sand, A Captain at Fifteen:

     The larger the game the more keen the excitement ; and no elephant-hunter's eagerness ever surpasses the zest of the whale-fisher when once started in pursuit of the prey.

   • 1882, The American Universal Cyclopædia:

     The whale-fishers approach the whale in boats, and attack it by harpoons to which lines are affixed, following up and repeating the attack, until its strength is exhausted, taking advantage of the necessity which it experiences of coming at intervals to the surface to breathe, and finally killing it with lances, which are thrust into the most vital parts.