Other forms: isles
An isle is an island, in poetic use or in place names. The British Isles, the Isle of Wight, a distant isle.
Nobody uses it in ordinary speech: it survives in names — the Isle of Man, the Isle of Skye — and in poetry, where it is chosen for being one syllable. Note that isle and island are unrelated words that came to look alike: island is Old English and isle is from Latin insula, and the s in island was added wrongly by people who thought they matched.
1nounisleAn island, in poetic use or in place names.
“They spent their honeymoon on the Isle of Skye.”
isle is an island.
Old French ille comes from Latin insula. The s was later restored to match the Latin, and English island then borrowed that s by mistake, though the two words have no common ancestor.
Latin
insula
Old French
ille
Middle English
ile
English, today
isle
From Middle English ile, yle (with s added, similar to English island), borrowed from Old French ille, idle, isle, from Latin insula. Not related to island. a doublet of insula.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA