Quick answer
Wail is a loud cry of grief or pain. A whale is a huge sea mammal. Memory hook: a whale is the huge animal, and both whale and huge carry an h.
The core difference
Wail is a loud cry of sorrow; whale is a very large sea mammal.
- wail — to cry out loudly in grief or pain, or the cry itself: The baby wailed all through the night.
- whale — a very large sea mammal that breathes through a blowhole: They watched a whale breach just off the coast.
How to tell them apart
In many accents these two are pronounced alike, so the confusion is a spelling one. Think about whether the sentence is about a sound or an animal. A sound of distress is a wail; something that swims is a whale.
To remember, notice that wail has the letters a-i-l, as in ail, which hints at pain. Whale ends in the same letters as male and scale, and has the extra h, like the h in huge. A typical slip is writing that someone was whaling in grief.
Frequently asked questions
Is it wail or whale when someone cries loudly?
It is wail. Whale is only the animal, though the verb whale exists separately and means to hunt whales.
Do wail and whale sound the same?
In many accents they do, which is why they are so easily mixed up in writing.
Can whale be a verb?
Yes, it can mean to hunt whales, as in a town whose families whaled for a living. It has nothing to do with crying.
