Moby Dick (1851) by Herman Melville is an epic novel narrated by the sailor Ishmael, detailing Captain Ahab’s obsessive quest to destroy Moby Dick, the giant white sperm whale that severed his leg. Sailing on the Pequod, Ahab leads his crew on a fatal pursuit across the globe, culminating in a three-day battle that destroys the ship and kills all crew members except Ishmael.
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Moby Dick
By Herman Melville
M D
ETYMOLOGY.
(Supplied by a Late Consumptive Usher to a Grammar
School)
The pale Usher—threadbare in coat, heart, body, and
brain; I see him now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons
and grammars, with a queer handkerchief, mockingly em-
bellished with all the gay flags of all the known nations of
the world. He loved to dust his old grammars; it somehow
mildly reminded him of his mortality.
‘While you take in hand to school others, and to teach them
by what name a whale-fish is to be called in our tongue
leaving out, through ignorance, the letter H, which almost
alone maketh the signification of the word, you deliver that
which is not true.’ —HACKLUYT
‘WHALE. … Sw. and Dan. HVAL. This animal is named from
roundness or rolling; for in Dan. HVALT is arched or vaulted.’
—WEBSTER’S DICTIONARY
‘WHALE. … It is more immediately from the Dut. and
Ger. WALLEN; A.S. WALW-IAN, to roll, to wallow.’ —
RICHARDSON’S DICTIONARY
KETOS, GREEK.
F B P B.
CETUS, LATIN.
WHOEL, ANGLO-SAXON.
HVALT, DANISH.
WAL, DUTCH.
HWAL, SWEDISH.
WHALE, ICELANDIC.
WHALE, ENGLISH.
BALEINE, FRENCH.
BALLENA, SPANISH.
PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE, FEGEE.
PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE, ERROMANGOAN.
EXTRACTS (Supplied by a Sub-Sub-Librarian).
It will be seen that this mere painstaking burrower and
grub-worm of a poor devil of a Sub-Sub appears to have
gone through the long Vaticans and street-stalls of the earth,
picking up whatever random allusions to whales he could
anyways find in any book whatsoever, sacred or profane.
Therefore you must not, in every case at least, take the
higgledy-piggledy whale statements, however authentic,
in these extracts, for veritable gospel cetology. Far from it.
As touching the ancient authors generally, as well as the
poets here appearing, these extracts are solely valuable or
entertaining, as affording a glancing bird’s eye view of what
has been promiscuously said, thought, fancied, and sung of
Leviathan, by many nations and generations, including our
own.
