is ‧ land S3 W2 /ˈaɪlənd/ BrE AmE noun [countable]
[ Language: Old English ; Origin: igland , from ig 'island' + land ]
a piece of land completely surrounded by water ⇨ insular :
The Cayman Islands
the Greek island of Crete
on an island
No cars are allowed on the island.
⇨ ↑ desert island
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COLLOCATIONS
■ adjectives
▪ large/big
Novaya Zemlja is a large island in the Russian Arctic.
▪ small/little
It’s a small island, barely twenty miles long.
▪ uninhabited (=one where nobody lives)
There are over a thousand uninhabited islands in the seas around Greece.
▪ remote (=far away)
I remember visiting a remote island off the west coast of Ireland.
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The islands were so remote that they could only be reached at certain times of the year.
▪ volcanic
More than 3,500 years ago, the volcanic island of Thera erupted.
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The island is volcanic and has very little vegetation.
▪ a desert island (=a tropical island that is far away and where nobody lives)
He was shipwrecked on a desert island.
▪ a tropical island
What could be more romantic than a wedding on a tropical island?
▪ a Greek/Spanish/Caribbean etc island
Chris told me he was sailing to the Greek islands.
▪ an offshore island
The turtles lay their eggs on the beaches of offshore islands.
■ island + NOUN
▪ island life
He had become used to the slow pace of island life.
▪ an island paradise
She had booked a beach house on the island paradise of Phuket.
▪ sb’s island home
He had invited her back to his island home on Grand Cayman.
■ phrases
▪ a chain/group of islands
Our destination was a chain of islands, sixty miles east of Taiwan.
▪ the tip of an island (=the thin pointed end of an island)
We live on the northernmost tip of the island of Barbados.
• • •
THESAURUS
▪ island a piece of land completely surrounded by water:
We visited the Greek island of Kos.
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In the centre of a lake is a small island.
▪ isle an island – used in poetry or in names of islands:
The horse carried him to the windswept isle of Bujan.
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It is the most southerly point in the British Isles.
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the Windward Isles
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the Isle of Wight
▪ peninsula a piece of land almost completely surrounded by water but joined to a large area of land:
There is a coastal path around the peninsula.
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the Korean peninsula
▪ archipelago a group of small islands that are in a line:
He lives on an island at the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago.