island

«island» in Mova's school dictionary: a piece of land with water all around it — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (an island, islands)

meaning for a pupil

1) An island is a piece of land with water all around it. tree →

2) An island is anything that stands alone, surrounded by something different, like a traffic island in a road or a kitchen island. tree →

sense in the lessons

In geography, Great Britain, Ireland, Tasmania, New Zealand's North and South Islands and Hawaii are islands; Australia is so big it is called a continent. A group of islands is an archipelago. Islands can form from volcanoes or coral. In road safety, a traffic island lets pedestrians stop halfway across. In stories, a desert island, treasure island or castaway tells the reader the hero is alone and must survive. Phrases: «on an island», «desert island», «island country», «traffic island», «no man is an island».

examples

• Ireland is an island in the Atlantic Ocean. tree →
• We took a ferry to the island. tree →
• New Zealand is made up of two main islands and many smaller ones. tree →
• Hawaii's islands were made by volcanoes. tree →
• The castaway lived alone on a desert island. tree →
• Wait on the traffic island before crossing the second lane. tree →
• Robinson Crusoe was stranded on an island. tree →
• We ate breakfast at the kitchen island. tree →

note

Spelling trap: the «s» is silent — «EYE-land». An island → «an», because it starts with a vowel sound. People live «on» an island, not «in» (except for large island countries: «in Ireland»). «Isle» is a poetic word for island (the Isle of Wight).

In the corpora

• Tigers love water and swim well; Sundarbans tigers swim between islands in the mangroves of India and Bangladesh and can swim several kilometres.
• Jonathan, a giant tortoise on the island of St Helena, hatched around 1832 and is the oldest known living land animal.
• Great apes do not swim naturally and can drown, so zoos use water moats around ape islands.
• Lemurs live wild only on Madagascar and a few nearby islands; about a hundred kinds are known, and many are in danger.
• Lonesome George, the last tortoise of his kind from Pinta Island, died in 2012.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «island» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.