Etymology

Proper noun

1. A king of Israel.
2. , very rarely used.

Quotations

• 1851 Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 16:

  Oh! he ain’t Captain Bildad; no, and he ain’t Captain Peleg; he’s Ahab, boy; and Ahab of old, thou knowest, was a crowned king!"

  "And a very vile one. When that wicked king was slain, the dogs, did they not lick his blood?"

  "Come hither to me—hither, hither," said Peleg, with a significance in his eye that almost startled me. "Look ye, lad; never say that on board the Pequod. Never say it anywhere. Captain Ahab did not name himself .'Twas a foolish, ignorant whim of his crazy, widowed mother, who died when he was only a twelvemonth old. And yet the old squaw Tistig, at Gayhead, said that the name would somehow prove prophetic.