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# cetacean

«cetacean» in Mova's school dictionary: **Any member of the group of sea mammals that includes…** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples.

### part of speech

noun (a cetacean, cetaceans); adjective (cetacean)

### meaning for a pupil

(science) Any member of the group of sea mammals that includes whales, dolphins and porpoises. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/cetacean/#m1)

### sense in the lessons

In science lessons, cetaceans are mammals, not fish: they breathe air through a blowhole, are warm-blooded, give birth to live young and feed them milk. Some (baleen whales) filter tiny food through baleen plates; others (toothed whales, dolphins) have teeth. In the Just So Story «How the Whale Got His Throat», Kipling jokes that the Whale's throat was blocked by a grating made from a raft, so he can only eat very small fish — real baleen whales do eat tiny krill, but not because of a grating.

### examples

- Whales, dolphins and porpoises are all cetaceans. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/cetacean/#x1)
- Cetaceans breathe air through a blowhole. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/cetacean/#x2)
- The blue whale is the biggest cetacean and the biggest animal ever. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/cetacean/#x3)
- A cetacean is a mammal, not a fish. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/cetacean/#x4)
- We saw cetaceans from the boat off the coast of New Zealand. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/cetacean/#x5)
- In the story, the Whale got a grating stuck in his throat. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/cetacean/#x6)

### note

Sounds like «sih-TAY-shun». Common myth: whales are fish — they are not. The word comes from Latin cetus, whale.

### Trees and pragmatics

[Every meaning and example of «cetacean» parsed by Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/cetacean/), each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.