From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishwhalerwhal‧er /ˈweɪlə $ -ər/ noun [countable] 1 BODSOsomeone who hunts whales2 TTWDSOa boat used to hunt whales
Examples from the Corpus
whaler• In the 1960s, the Soviet Union built the Sovetskaya Rossiya, a whaler the size of an aircraft carrier.• Biology played an important role in southern exploration, for many of the early explorers were sealers and whalers.• Brave whalers were pitted against the mysterious powers of the deep, as represented by the huge whale.• The Hawaiians had no names for whales and the old whalers never found them around the islands.• Later, he owned a share in two other whalers.• The whalers spring into the sea and the boat is crushed beneath the hull.