Australia is the country that is also a continent, home of kangaroos and Sydney. Travel to Australia, northern Australia, the coast of Australia.
Most of its wildlife is found nowhere else, because it drifted alone for fifty million years. Canberra is the capital, chosen as a compromise between Sydney and Melbourne. Aboriginal Australians have the oldest continuous cultures on earth, going back over sixty thousand years.
1nounaustraliaA country and continent in the southern hemisphere.
“Kangaroos and koalas are found in the wild only in Australia.”
australia is a country.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂ews-
Latin
terra austrālis incōgnita
English
Australia
English, today
australia
Built from
Australia comes from Latin terra austrālis incōgnita, from la + terra. First attested 16th century, from Latin terra austrālis incōgnita (“unknown southern land”), from auster (“the south wind”). Used also in 1693 (quotation below). Popularised by Matthew Flinders in 1814 (quotation below). by surface analysis, Austral- + -ia. Distantly cognate to Austria, containing the same Proto-Indo-European root, but through German where it retained the earlier sense of “east” rather than “south”.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Countries & Flags