Other forms: harpoons, harpooned, harpooning
A harpoon is a spear on a line, thrown at a large sea animal. Throw a harpoon, a harpoon gun, harpooned the whale.
The barbed head holds while the line stays attached to the boat, which is the whole design and what makes it different from a spear. The explosive harpoon gun, invented in 1868, is what made industrial whaling possible and nearly emptied the oceans of the largest whales. Note harpooner; and that the word comes from the Greek for a hook.
1nounharpoonA spear on a line, thrown at a large sea animal.
“The hunters threw a harpoon at the seal from their kayak.”
2verbstrikeTo strike with such a spear.
“The whalers harpooned the huge animal from their small boat.”
harpoon is a throwing spear.
Old French harpon comes through Latin from Greek harpe, a hook or sickle. Harpy, the snatching creature, comes from the same seizing.
Ancient Greek
ἁρπάγη — hook
Latin
harpaga
Old French
harpon
English, today
harpoon
Built from
From Old French harpon, from Latin harpaga, a variant of Latin harpagō, from Ancient Greek ἁρπάγη (“hook”), from ἁρπάζω (“to snatch away, to carry off, to seize, to captivate”). Sense and spelling perhaps influenced by harpoen. a doublet of harpagon.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Sea & Sailing