blue whale
1
8.1
- noun
- /blu weɪl/
- Offensive
:
reto de la ballena azul
- The documentary examined how the blue whale phenomenon spread through private messaging apps.
Examples
-
After schools warned parents, authorities investigated alleged blue whale posts encouraging self-harm.
-
The blue whale challenge was dangerous and harmful.
-
Reports described the blue whale challenge spreading across social platforms among teens.
-
Many teens fell victim to the blue whale game.
-
The blue whale challenge was linked to several tragic incidents in social media news.
-
Many teenagers were drawn into the blue whale phenomenon, which posed dangerous tasks.
-
Parents were alarmed when they learned about the blue whale challenge affecting their children.
Synonyms
1
9.9
A frightening fake character from an online hoax shared on social media
How Dangerous
Surface Forms
Morphology
The sense 'a dangerous online social-media challenge' is a culturally specific, named phenomenon that has no predictable connection to the literal constituents 'blue' (a color) and 'whale' (an animal or metaphorically a large person). Because the meaning depends on contemporary cultural knowledge rather than compositional semantics, a B1 learner who knows the words would not be able to infer this sense.
Etymology
Blue whale as the name for the online 'challenge' probably comes from the idea of a lonely sea animal and from 'blue' meaning sad. One popular story says the name and a whale picture were used to make the game seem mysterious, which is why the term now refers to a dangerous online 'challenge' linked to 'self-harm'.