English edit

Noun edit

north-caper (plural north-capers)

  1. Alternative form of Nordcaper
    • 1876, Jules Verne, The Adventures of Captain Hatteras, page 174:
      The young seals played together ; the unicorn fish, armed with its long, straight, and conical arm, which it uses to saw the ice-fields, pursued the timid cetaceans, innumerable whales spouting columns of water and mucilage ; the north-caper, with its loose tail and training fins, cutting the waves with wonderful rapidity, feeding itself as it goes with animals as rapid as itself, whilst the idler white whale swallows tranquilly molluscs as indolent as it is.
    • 1912, Sir John Murray, Johan Hjort, Haakon Hasberg Gran, The Depths of the Ocean:
      In northern boreal waters, north of the isotherm of 10⁰ C., only or mainly the Greenland whale, fin-whales, aid humpbacks are found, the right whale of the North Atlantic (north-caper or Biscayan whale, Balaena biscayensis, Fig. 57) being a rare visitor.