Other forms: islands
An island is a piece of land with water all the way around it. A small island, the island of Skye, a desert island.
By convention Australia is a continent and Greenland is an island, and the line between them is drawn by agreement rather than by size. An island is also anything surrounded by something else: a traffic island, a kitchen island. Note no man is an island, from Donne; and that the s in island is an intrusion — the word was iland until scholars added it wrongly by association with isle.
1nounislandA piece of land with water all the way around it.
“They spent their holiday on a small Greek island.”
2nounanythingAnything surrounded by something else.
“There's a traffic island in the middle of the road where you can wait.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
island is a landform.
Old English iegland is ieg, an island, plus land. The s was inserted in the sixteenth century by scholars who wrongly connected it to the unrelated French isle, and the mistake stuck.
Proto-Indo-European
*lendʰ-
Proto-Germanic
*awjōlandą
Proto-West Germanic
*auwjuland
Old English
īeġland
Middle English
iland
English, today
island
Built from
From earlier iland, from Middle English iland, yland, ylond, from Old English īeġland, from Proto-West Germanic auwjuland, from Proto-Germanic awjōlandą (from Proto-Germanic awjō (“island, waterland, meadow”), from Proto-Indo-European h₂ekʷeh₂) + landą (“land”), equivalent to ey + land. a doublet of Öland. Cognate with Scots island, iland, yland (“island”), West Frisian eilân (“island”), stq Ailound (“island”), Dutch eiland (“island”), Low German Eiland (“island”), German Eiland (“island”), Swedish ö (“island”), Öland (“Sweden's second largest island”), Danish ø (“island”), Norwegian øy (“island”), øyland (“large island”), Icelandic eyland (“island”). The insertion of ⟨s⟩—a 16th century spelling modification—is due to a change in spelling to the unrelated term isle, which previously lacked s (cf. Middle English ile, yle). The re-addition was mistakenly carried over to include iland as well. Related also to German Aue (“water-meadow”), Latin aqua (“water”). More at ea.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA