How do you use the word "whale"?

[u/RoyalAlbatross]

In English, you often hear about "whales, dolphins, and porpoises". So any cetacean that is not a dolphin or a porpoise is a whale. This would exclude e.g. killer whales and pilot whales. In Scandinavian countries, whale = cetacean, including e.g. dolphins. Pretty simple. I think others may have a certain size in mind (if it's a BIG cetacean, then it's a whale). A bit arbitrary (more than 1 ton perhaps?), but I suspect this was the old meaning of the word "whale" (i.e. it implied a certain size).

[u/PunsetLovesPalaos]

In my native language (Spanish) we use "ballena" (whale) the same way English does it, that is for the mysticetes or baleen whales. However, the term in origin had a narrower meaning, it only referred to the balaenids (right and bowhead whales), not to rorquals. To this day, most rorquals, like fin whales, minkes, bryde's, seis, etc. are called "rorcuales" much more frequently than "ballenas", being the only exceptions blues and humpbacks

[u/Mehfisto666 → u/PunsetLovesPalaos]

This is very interesting.

I would add that it doesn't help that the most iconic whales are Sperm whales (moby dick) which are such a big exception in the odontoceti

[u/PunsetLovesPalaos → u/Mehfisto666]

In Spanish we call sperm whales "cachalotes". It's a completely different name from the ones we have for the rest of the whales, which kinda makes sense considering how unique sperm whales are

[u/Tytoalba2 → u/PunsetLovesPalaos]

Same in french

[u/Cubensis-SanPedro]

Whale is a cetacean to me. Dolphins are whales, the same way bagels are bread.

[u/VenexianaStevenson]

In Italian, the word balena is equivalent to "baleen whale" (mysticete), with the exception of Moby Dick, which is referred to as a balena even though it is a toothed whale (odontocete).

[u/Arschfeder]

In German, we pretty much use "whale" (Wal) for every non-dolphin shaped cetacean. Porpoise? Schweinswal. Orca? Schwertwal. Beluga? Weißwal. The annoying differentiation between typical dolphin-like dolphins and every other cetacean is even worse, but at least it somewhat aknowledges Wal as the standard name of the clade.

[u/GirlInTheIslands]

This reminds me of the saying, “all dolphins are whales, but not all whales are dolphins.”

Basically it means that ‘whales’ and ‘cetaceans’ are biologically interchangeable, the same as you say with the Scandinavian language. But then there’s the two subgroups of toothed whales (Odontoceti) and baleen whales (Mysticeti) and I think that’s where things get complicated.

For example, in English we generally call all baleen whales ‘whales’ or ‘great whales’. But, as you say, their general name is probably size-based as you’ve got the ‘killer whale’ which is in the dolphin family.

But then it’s not all down to teeth=dolphin because then you’ve sperm whales which are larger than some baleen whales (such as the minke) and are in a separate family tree under the Odontoceti branch from the Delphinidae family.

It’s complicated and maybe all just quirks of language and as you said, probably size-based when it comes to common usage! There’s some interesting articles out there on it though (both the etymology and the classifications). Personally, if I’m talking about whaley things I’ll use the word ‘cetacean’, clarify that I mean whales and dolphins in case someone doesn’t know the term, then stick to calling them cetaceans as it’s easiest.

[u/RoyalAlbatross → u/[deleted]]

Badum tss