
  

                                Herman Melville

                                   Moby-Dick

                                       or,

                                        

                                   The Whale

                                    In token
                        Of my admiration for his genius
                             This book is inscribed
                                       to
 
                              NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

                                   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 up the signification of the word, you
deliver that which is not true.«
                                                                        Hakluyt.
 
»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.
 
, Hebrew.
xhtos, Greek.
Cetus, Latin.
Whoel, Anglo-Saxon.
Hvalt, Danish.
Wal, Dutch.
Hwalt, Swedish.
Whale, Icelandic.
Whale, English.
Baleine, French.
Ballena, Spanish.
Pekee-nuee-nuee, Feegee.
Pehee-nuee-nuee, Erromangoan.
 

                                    Extracts

                       (Supplied by a Sub-Sub-Librarian)
 
It will be seen that this mere painstaking burrower and grub-worm of a poor
devil of a Sub-Sub appears to have gone through the long Vaticans and
street-stalls of the earth, picking up whatever random allusions to whales he
could anyways find in any book whatsoever, sacred or profane. Therefore you must
not, in every case at least, take the higgledy-piggledy whale statements,
however authentic, in these extracts, for veritable gospel cetology. Far from
it. As touching the ancient authors generally, as well as the poets here
appearing, these extracts are solely valuable or entertaining, as affording a
glancing bird's-eye view of what has been promiscuously said, thought, fancied,
and sung of Leviathan, by many nations and generations, including our own.
    So fare thee well, poor devil of a Sub-Sub, whose commentator I am. Thou
belongest to that hopeless, sallow tribe which no wine of this world will
