FreeScrabbleDictionary

porpoise

Valid in Scrabble

Scrabble points
12
Words With Friends
14
Letters
8
Pronunciation
/ˈpɔːpəs/ (UK)
See all 3 pronunciations
/ˈpɔːpəs/ (UK) · /pɔːˈpɔɪs/ (UK) · /ˈpɔːɹpəs/ (US)

Definition of porpoise

4 senses · 2 parts of speech · etymology included

noun

  1. A small cetacean of the family Phocoenidae, related to dolphins and whales.
    “Near-synonyms: sea hog, sea pig, seaswine, mereswine”
    “They captured 25 porpoises and set them free back into the Yangtze after raising them for a month in Puqi County, Hubei.”
See all 4 definitions

noun

  1. A small cetacean of the family Phocoenidae, related to dolphins and whales.
    “Near-synonyms: sea hog, sea pig, seaswine, mereswine”
    “They captured 25 porpoises and set them free back into the Yangtze after raising them for a month in Puqi County, Hubei.”
  2. (Canada, US, broadly)Any small dolphin.

verb

  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.
    “Urging them to join me, I raced in circles through the surging water, chased my tail for the children, blew spouts of foam through the sunfilled spray, porpoised to and fro across the river in shallow leaps that stitched the air and water into a table-lace of foam.”
  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.

Definitions from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA.

Etymology

From Middle English porpeys, purpeys, borrowed from Anglo-Norman porpeis, purpeis, Old French pourpois, porpois, pourpais, porpeis (“porpoise”), from Vulgar Latin *porcopiscis (“porpoise”, literally “hog-fish”), taken from Latin porcus (“hog, pig”)…

See full etymology

From Middle English porpeys, purpeys, borrowed from Anglo-Norman porpeis, purpeis, Old French pourpois, porpois, pourpais, porpeis (“porpoise”), from Vulgar Latin *porcopiscis (“porpoise”, literally “hog-fish”), taken from Latin porcus (“hog, pig”) + piscis (“fish”). Compare (in transposed order) obsolete Italian pesce porco and Portuguese peixe porco; also Latin porcus marīnus (“sea hog”); akin in formation to Frankish *mariswīn (“porpoise, dolphin”) (whence German Meerschwein, English mereswine). Displaced native Middle English brunswyn. More at mereswine.

Anagrams of porpoise

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Words you can make from porpoise

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Best play opposer 11 points

7-letter words

3 words

6-letter words

10 words

5-letter words

33 words

4-letter words

43 words

3-letter words

32 words

2-letter words

14 words

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2 extensions · 2 back

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