a horny material from the upper jaws of certain whales; used as the ribs of fans or as stays in corsets

Plates or blades of whalebone, from two to twelve feet long, and sometimes a foot wide, which in certain whales ( Balaenoidea) are attached side by side along the upper jaw, and form a fringelike sieve by which the food is retained in the mouth.

The whalebone of commerce.

Whalebone.

The horny plates attached to the upper jaw of true whales; whalebone.

Each of these floating tanks of baleen and oil nets his lucky captor from thirteen thousand dollars upward? – The New North by Agnes Deans Cameron

The inside of the monstrous cavity, the mouth, has nothing like the baleen or whale- bone, such as is found in the Greenland whale; but in the lower jaw it has a formidable row of large teeth of conical shape, forty- two in number. – Old Jack by W.H.G. Kingston

This bone came out in umiaks and was stored with the other baleen in the forehold. – The Ice Pilot by Henry Leverage

According to Scammon three or four of them do not hesitate to grapple with the largest baleen whale; and, as described by Dr. Murie, the latter often, paralysed through fear, lie helpless and at their mercy. – Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon by Robert A. Sterndale

The cruises at first were toward Greenland after the so- called right whales, a variety of the cetaceans which has an added commercial value because of the baleen, or whalebone, which hangs in great strips from the roof of its mouth to its lower jaw, forming a sort of screen or sieve by which it sifts its food out of prodigious mouthfuls of sea water. – American Merchant Ships and Sailors by Willis J. Abbot

An average whale between forty and fifty feet in length will yield from sixty to eighty barrels of oil and a thousand pounds of baleen. – Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon by Robert A. Sterndale

What do we do with baleen? – The New North by Agnes Deans Cameron

The latter contains the baleen whales. – Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon by Robert A. Sterndale

Whalebone whips are made from single pieces of baleen seven or eight feet long. – The New North by Agnes Deans Cameron