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# orca

«orca» in Mova's school dictionary: **a large black-and-white sea mammal with a tall back fin…** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 3 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

### part of speech

noun (an orca, orcas)

### meaning for a pupil

1) An orca, also called a killer whale, is a large black-and-white sea mammal with a tall back fin; it is actually the biggest member of the dolphin family. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/O/orca/#m1)

2) Orcas live and hunt in family groups called pods in all the world's oceans, especially cold ones. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/O/orca/#m2)

### sense in the lessons

In science lessons orcas come up in ocean food chains (top predator — they eat fish, seals, penguins and even whales), mammals (they breathe air through a blowhole and feed their young milk) and communication: each pod has its own calls, like a family language. In conservation lessons, pupils learn about pollution and noise in the sea and debates about keeping orcas in marine parks.

### examples

- The orca is the largest kind of dolphin. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/O/orca/#x1)
- Orcas hunt together in pods. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/O/orca/#x2)
- An orca breathes through a blowhole on its head. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/O/orca/#x3)
- We saw an orca's tall black fin from the boat. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/O/orca/#x4)
- Orcas sometimes slide onto beaches to catch seals. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/O/orca/#x5)
- Each orca pod has its own calls. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/O/orca/#x6)
- Another name for the orca is the killer whale. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/O/orca/#x7)

### note

Plural «orcas»; «an orca». Trap: despite the name «killer whale», an orca is a dolphin, and wild orcas are not known to have killed people. Orcas are mammals, not fish.

### In the corpora

- [Different orca groups eat different food and use different call «dialects», and they do not mix.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/235-animal-minds-dolphins-names-orca-grandmothers-and-whale-songs/8/)
- [Orca groups are led by old grandmothers who can live 80 or even 90 years and remember where salmon are in bad years.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/235-animal-minds-dolphins-names-orca-grandmothers-and-whale-songs/9/)
- [There are no confirmed cases of wild orcas killing a person.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/313-whales-by-kind-the-toothed-whales-sperm-whale-orca-beluga-and-beaked-whales/11/)

### Trees and pragmatics

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