whalebone

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   baleen, the flexible keratin plates in certain whales' mouths that filter food from water

   The bowhead whale strains small prey through its long whalebone plates.

2. 2
   noun

   a strip or object made from baleen, formerly used especially to stiffen clothing

   The conservator replaced the broken whalebone in the nineteenth-century corset.

A compound of whale + bone, recorded from Middle English. Baleen was called bone because its hard, resilient plates resembled horn or bone, although it is made of keratin rather than skeletal tissue.

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