The carcass of a whale after the blubber has been removed.
The word “krill” represented one of my great vocabulary triumphs.
I was something of a wordsmith in high school. My writing vocabulary went beyond mere SAT words and rambled into obsolescence and occasional incomprehensibility.
It was not in an English or Literature class, though, where my knowledge of krill was the tonic that sated the confusion that filled the room when the teacher asked us what whales ate.
He asked the question more artfully, I think, but the he asked this question to show that enormous whales do not generally eat enormous things, but oodles and oodles (and oooooodles) of tiny things.
The question was asked and I saw the others in the class flipping madly through their class notes and textbooks, whispering “What the hell do whales eat? Huh?”
Confidently I raised my right hand and, with the knowledge of one about to deliver a shocking bolt of news I raised both hands in a half-halleluiah gesture and said “Krill.”
Every single student turned to stare at me for a moment. The teacher was a bit chagrined, not because I knew the answer but because no one else did.
This was a science class but I knew the word from crossword puzzles, not from studying.
