Meaning: Any of several small gregarious cetacean mammals having a blunt snout and many teeth. Classified under: Nouns denoting animals. Hypernyms (porpoise is a kind of...): dolphin (any of various small toothed whales with a beaklike snout; larger than porpoises) Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of porpoise): harbor porpoise; herring hog; Phocaena phocaena (the common porpoise of the northern Atlantic and Pacific)