The Project Gutenberg EBook of Moby Dick; or The Whale, by Herman Melville

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Title: Moby Dick; or The Whale

Author: Herman Melville

Last Updated: January 3, 2009
Posting Date: December 25, 2008 [EBook #2701]
Release Date: June, 2001

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOBY DICK; OR THE WHALE ***

Produced by Daniel Lazarus and Jonesey

MOBY DICK; OR THE WHALE

By Herman Melville

Original Transcriber's Notes:

This text is a combination of etexts, one from the now-defunct ERIS
project at Virginia Tech and one from Project Gutenberg's archives. The
proofreaders of this version are indebted to The University of Adelaide
Library for preserving the Virginia Tech version. The resulting etext
was compared with a public domain hard copy version of the text.

In chapters 24, 89, and 90, we substituted a capital L for the symbol
for the British pound, a unit of currency.

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 embellished 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.
CETUS, LATIN.
WHOEL, ANGLO-SAXON.
HVALT, DANISH.
WAL, DUTCH.
HWAL, SWEDISH.
WHALE, ICELANDIC.
WHALE, ENGLISH.
BALE