Whale

The term whale is ambiguous: it can refer to all cetaceans, to just the larger ones, or only to members of particular families within the order Cetacea. The last definition is the one followed here. Whales are those cetaceans which are neither dolphins nor porpoises. This can lead to some confusion because Orcas ("Killer Whales") and Pilot whales have "whale" in their name, but they are dolphins for the purpose of classification.