whale n. a large man-made snow mound. Editorial Note: Usually resulting from a commercial snow-grooming machinery typical of a ski resort. Etymological Note: So-called because of their large, round shape and perhaps influenced by “whale” meaning “a large or significant example of a particular thing,” as in “I have a whale of a headache.” (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Samantha Harvey’s novel Orbital is a sensuous, exhilarating meditation about the strangeness of life on a space station, with its mix of tedious tasks and jaw-dropping views. And: a musician who rode the rails in his youth shares the slang he...
A member of the ski patrol at Vermont’s Sugarbush Resort shares some workplace slang. Boilerplate denotes hard-packed snow with a ruffled pattern that makes skis chatter, death cookies are random chunks that could cause an accident, and...
I would imagine that the snow color helping the mound look like a great white whale (Moby Dick) has something to do with it too.