Whalebone is the hard, springy material that hangs in long plates from the upper jaw of some whales, which they use to strain tiny animals out of the seawater they swallow. Before plastic existed, people cut it into thin strips and used it wherever they needed something both stiff and bendy: it stiffened corsets and the wide skirts of women's dresses, and it was used for collars, umbrella ribs, whips, and brushes. That is why the word turns up so often in nineteenth-century novels and in museum labels — a "whalebone corset" is the classic example. Two things are worth knowing. First, it is not really bone: the proper name for it is baleen, and it is made of keratin, the same stuff as your fingernails. Whales with it are called baleen whales. Second, the word is uncountable — you say "a piece of whalebone", not "a whalebone" or "two whalebones", though the individual strips inside a corset are sometimes called bones. Today it is mostly a historical word; whaling for it stopped long ago and it is illegal to trade in it in most countries, so modern corsets use steel or plastic instead.

鯨鬚（鯨魚上顎的角質板，正式名稱 baleen）。舊時用來撐緊束腹、裙撐、傘骨；並非真的骨頭，成分和指甲相同。