Chapter Well of Samaria to Wharton of W by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Whale Very like a whale. Very much like a cock-and-bull story; a fudge. Hamlet chaffs Polonius by comparing a cloud to a camel, and then to a weasel, and when the courtier assents Hamlet adds, “Or like a whale”; to which Polonius answers, “Very like a whale.” (Act iii. 2.)

Whalebone (2 syl.). White as whalebone. Our forefathers seemed to confuse the walrus with the whale; ivory was made from the teeth of the walrus, and “white as whalebone” is really a blunder for “white as walrus- ivory.”

Wharncliffe (2 syl.). A Wharncliffe meeting is a meeting of the shareholders of a railway company, called for the purpose of obtaining their assent to a bill in Parliament bearing on the company's railway. So called from Lord Wharncliffe, its originator.

Wharton Philip Wharton, Duke of Northumberland, described by Pope in the Moral Essays in the lines beginning-

“Wharton, the scron and wonder of our days.”

A most brilliant orator, but so licentious that he wasted his patrimony in drunkenness and self-indulgence. He was outlawed for treason, and died in a wretched condition at a Bernardine convent in Catalonia. (1698-1731.)