whale
n.— «“Whale” season is in full swing up in Colorado’s high country, as the state’s ski resorts pump thousands of gallons of water through snowmaking equipment to create autumn’s signature-shaped piles of artificial snow.…“We’ve been blowing it into whales in the shady parts of the mountain, especially on top where it doesn’t warm up too much.”…Taking advantage of the colder overnight temperatures in the preseason, resorts direct snowmaking guns to shoot whale-shaped piles of snow in shady areas, then use Snowcat grooming equipment to distribute the snow across the trails.» —“Colo. ski resort snow guns having a ‘whale’ of a time” by Michelle Mahoney Denver Post (Colorado) Oct. 12, 1993. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
A retronym is a word coined to distinguish something new from an older, more generic version, such as electric guitar or clock radio. A couple of new retronyms are fine water, or “unprocessed water that reflects a region’s terroir” and water...