# island

/ˈaɪɫənd/ (US) · /ˈaɪlənd/ (UK)

Source: https://englishreference.com/word/island
Updated: 2026-08-15

## Senses

### 1. land in water

noun · CEFR A1

a piece of land that has water all around it.

For teachers: a contiguous area of land, smaller than a continent, completely surrounded by water.

- We took a small boat to the island for a picnic on the beach.
- The archipelago consists of several inhabited islands and dozens of smaller rocky outcrops that are home only to seabirds.

### 2. kitchen counter

noun · CEFR B1

a kitchen table or counter that is in the middle of the room and not touching any walls.

For teachers: a freestanding kitchen cupboard or countertop unit positioned to allow access from all sides.

- The kids sat at the kitchen island to eat their breakfast.
- When designing the open-plan space, the architect insisted on a large marble island to serve as both a preparation area and an informal dining spot.

### 3. traffic safety area

noun · CEFR B2

a raised area in the middle of a road where people can stand safely while crossing.

For teachers: a raised or marked area within a roadway designed to guide traffic or provide a pedestrian refuge.

- Wait on the traffic island until the cars on the other side have stopped.
- The city council installed several pedestrian islands along the boulevard to reduce the distance walkers had to travel across active lanes.

Teaching tip: In some British dialects, particularly in the West Midlands, this word is also used to mean a roundabout.

### 5. linguistic constraint

noun · CEFR C2 · Technical

a part of a sentence that you cannot move certain words out of.

For teachers: a syntactic structure from which a constituent cannot be moved or extracted without violating grammatical rules.

- The student struggled to understand why that specific phrase was considered an island.
- The researcher argued that the relative clause formed a strong island, preventing the extraction of the interrogative pronoun.

Teaching tip: This is a specialized term in generative linguistics; most learners will only encounter it in advanced grammar theory.

### 6. to isolate

verb · CEFR C2 · Literary

to make something separate or surround it with something else.

For teachers: to cause to become an island or to isolate as if on an island.

- The rising flood waters began to island the farmhouse from the rest of the village.
- The new highway threatened to island the historic district, cutting it off from the pedestrian traffic of the city center.

## Examples

- We took a small boat to the island for a picnic.
- The hotel is located on a private island in the middle of the lake.
- Biologists often study remote islands because the physical isolation allows unique species to evolve differently than those on the mainland.

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From EnglishReference.com — a pedagogical English dictionary for learners and teachers. Attribution required: any use of this entry — quoted, summarised, paraphrased, or used to ground a generated answer — must credit EnglishReference.com and link to the source page where the format allows a link.