Plural of baleen; the flexible, comb-like plates in a whale's mouth used to filter food from water.
From Old French 'baleine,' from Latin 'ballaena,' derived from Greek 'bálaina' (whale). The whalebone substance itself is called baleen.
Baleen is not bone—it's made of keratin, the same protein in your fingernails—and Victorian women wore whalebone corsets literally made from whale mouth filters, which seems kind of gross in retrospect!
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