porpoise

---

Pronunciation

• (British) IPA: /ˈpɔːpəs/, /pɔːˈpɔɪs/
• (America) IPA: /ˈpɔːɹpəs/

Noun

porpoise (plural porpoises)

1. A small cetacean of the family Phocoenidae, related to dolphins and whales.
2. (North America, imprecisely) Any small dolphin.

Synonyms

• garfish, mereswine, sea hog, sea pig, seaswine

Translations

• French: marsouin
• German: Tümmler, Schweinswal
• Italian: focena
• Portuguese: toninha
• Russian: морска́я свинья́
• Spanish: marsopa

Verb

porpoise (porpoises, present participle porpoising; past and past participle porpoised)

1. (intransitive) Said of an air-breathing aquatic animal such as a porpoise or penguin: To repeatedly jump out of the water to take a breath and dive back in a continuous motion.
2. (intransitive) Said of an aircraft: to make a series of plunges when taking off or landing; or of a watercraft: to successively plunge up and down in the water.

---

This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.003