killer whale

Wikispecies

Calque or mistranslation of Spanish asesina-ballenas (“whale killer”), referring to their tendency to hunt whales.

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killer whale (plural killer whales)

1. A sea mammal related to dolphins and porpoises (Orcinus orca).
   • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:

     Of this whale, little is known to the Nantucketer, and nothing at all to the professed naturalist. From what I have seen of him at a distance, I should say that he was about the bigness of a grampus. He is very savage - a sort of Feegee fish. He sometimes takes the great Folio whales by the lip and hangs there like a leech until the mighty brute is worried to death. The killer is never hunted. I have never heard what sort of oil he has. Exception might be taken to the name of this whale, on the grounds of its indistinctness. For we are all killers on land and on sea; Bonaparts and sharks included.

   • 1893, Fridtjof Nansen, The First Crossing of Greenland, Longmans, Green, and Company, page 89:

     Once or twice, too, I saw the killer-whale (Orca gladiator), the little species so readily known by its prominent back-fin.

   • 1895, Proceedings, Volume 12, page 190:

     It is the killer whale, which follows these herds, makes its attack upon them, and doubtless kills a great many.

   • 1899, Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Journal - Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Volume 28, page 134:

     They display two totems, the Bear and the Killer-Whale (Orca ater) belonging to the Haida-Tsimshian group of tribes, whether Haidas of Queen Charlotte Islands or Tsimshians of the Mainland.

Some prefer the term orca, as "killer whale" can be perceived as a loaded term.

• (sea mammal): Orcinus orca, orca

• false killer whale
• pygmy killer whale

• Wikipedia article on the common names of orcas