What does moby-dick mean?

Definitions for moby-dick
moby-dick

This dictionary definitions page includes all the possible meanings, example usage and translations of the word moby-dick.


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Wiktionary

  1. Moby-Dicknoun

    A work originally titled The Whale in 1851 by Herman Melville, a highly symbolic story about a whaling ship led by Captain Ahab, which begins Call me Ishmael.

  2. Moby-Dicknoun

    The elusive white whale hunted in this novel.

Wikipedia

  1. Moby-Dick

    Moby-Dick; or, The Whale is an 1851 novel by American writer Herman Melville. The book is the sailor Ishmael's narrative of the maniacal quest of Ahab, captain of the whaling ship Pequod, for vengeance against Moby Dick, the giant white sperm whale that crippled him on the ship's previous voyage. A contribution to the literature of the American Renaissance, Moby-Dick was published to mixed reviews, was a commercial failure, and was out of print at the time of the author's death in 1891. Its reputation as a "Great American Novel" was established only in the 20th century, after the 1919 centennial of its author's birth. William Faulkner said he wished he had written the book himself, and D. H. Lawrence called it "one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world" and "the greatest book of the sea ever written". Its opening sentence, "Call me Ishmael", is among world literature's most famous.Melville began writing Moby-Dick in February 1850 and finished 18 months later, a year after he had anticipated. Melville drew on his experience as a common sailor from 1841 to 1844, including on whalers, and on wide reading in whaling literature. The white whale is modeled on a notoriously hard-to-catch albino whale Mocha Dick, and the book's ending is based on the sinking of the whaleship Essex in 1820. The detailed and realistic descriptions of whale hunting and of extracting whale oil, as well as life aboard ship among a culturally diverse crew, are mixed with exploration of class and social status, good and evil, and the existence of God. The book's literary influences include Shakespeare, Carlyle and the Bible. In addition to narrative prose, Melville uses styles and literary devices ranging from songs, poetry, and catalogs to Shakespearean stage directions, soliloquies, and asides. In August 1850, with the manuscript perhaps half finished, he met Nathaniel Hawthorne and was deeply impressed by his Mosses from an Old Manse, which he compared to Shakespeare in its cosmic ambitions. This encounter may have inspired him to revise and deepen Moby-Dick, which is dedicated to Hawthorne, "in token of my admiration for his genius". The book was first published (in three volumes) as The Whale in London in October 1851, and under its definitive title, Moby-Dick, or, The Whale, in a single-volume edition in New York in November. The London publisher, Richard Bentley, censored or changed sensitive passages; Melville made revisions as well, including a last-minute change of the title for the New York edition. The whale, however, appears in the text of both editions as "Moby Dick", without the hyphen. Reviewers in Britain were largely favorable, though some objected that the tale seemed to be told by a narrator who perished with the ship, as the British edition lacked the epilogue recounting Ishmael's survival. American reviewers were more hostile.

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Numerology

  1. Chaldean Numerology

    The numerical value of moby-dick in Chaldean Numerology is: 6

  2. Pythagorean Numerology

    The numerical value of moby-dick in Pythagorean Numerology is: 1

Examples of moby-dick in a Sentence

  1. Catfish Hunter:

    I haven't been this happy since Moby Dick was a guppy! (said in an interview after a series victory).

  2. Zig Ziglar:

    Confidence is Going after Moby Dick in a rowboat, And taking the tarter sauce with you. A Bullfighter who goes in the ring with mustard on his sword.

  3. Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy:

    1.this has been going on since moby dick was a minnow 2.Don't stand between a dog and a fire hydrant

  4. Academy Award winner Ron Howard:

    I loved that it's a sea adventure and that it deals with a mythic figure ... the whale that actually inspired Melville to write 'Moby Dick' was every bit as intense as 'Moby Dick' and that real event was something that I wanted to share with audiences.


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"moby-dick." Definitions.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Mar. 2024. <https://www.definitions.net/definition/moby-dick>.

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