From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishldoce_171_dislandis‧land /ˈaɪlənd/ ●●● S3 W2 noun [countable] DNa piece of land completely surrounded by water → insular The Cayman Islands the Greek island of Creteon an island No cars are allowed on the island. → desert islandCOLLOCATIONSadjectiveslarge/big Novaya Zemlja is a large island in the Russian Arctic.small/little It’s a small island, barely twenty miles long.uninhabited (=one where nobody lives)There are over a thousand uninhabited islands in the seas around Greece.remote (=far away)I remember visiting a remote island off the west coast of Ireland.The islands were so remote that they could only be reached at certain times of the year. volcanic More than 3,500 years ago, the volcanic island of Thera erupted.The island is volcanic and has very little vegetation. a desert island (=a tropical island that is far away and where nobody lives)He was shipwrecked on a desert island.a tropical islandWhat could be more romantic than a wedding on a tropical island?a Greek/Spanish/Caribbean etc islandChris told me he was sailing to the Greek islands.an offshore islandThe turtles lay their eggs on the beaches of offshore islands.island + NOUNisland lifeHe had become used to the slow pace of island life.an island paradiseShe had booked a beach house on the island paradise of Phuket.somebody’s island homeHe had invited her back to his island home on Grand Cayman.phrasesa chain/group of islandsOur destination was a chain of islands, sixty miles east of Taiwan.the tip of an island (=the thin pointed end of an island)We live on the northernmost tip of the island of Barbados. THESAURUSisland a piece of land completely surrounded by waterWe visited the Greek island of Kos.In the centre of a lake is a small island.isle an island – used in poetry or in names of islandsThe horse carried him to the windswept isle of Bujan.It is the most southerly point in the British Isles.the Windward Islesthe Isle of Wightpeninsula a piece of land almost completely surrounded by water but joined to a large area of landThere is a coastal path around the peninsula.the Korean peninsulaarchipelago a group of small islands that are in a lineHe lives on an island at the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago.
Examples from the Corpus
island• For centuries, Switzerland was an island of peace in troubled Europe.• the Hawaiian Islands• Flotillas of tabular icebergs and ice islands sail among the pack ice.• Moles floated like islands on both temples.• Occasional islands of regenerative mucosa were present.• There are beaches of rounded grey basalt pebbles of varying sizes elsewhere around the island.• As Finch approached Howland, she, too, realized how fortunate she was to be able to find the island.• The morning of our last day on the island is brighter.• the island of Trinidad• Sepulchers face the sea, as on the mainland, but on this tiny island death seems everywhere.on an island• The eruption buried the Late Bronze Age town of Akrotiri on the island and there were also marked effects on islands nearby.• The idea of putting the army on an island is preposterous.• In particular there are close associations between nesting density on islands or islets, foraging habits, breeding ecology, and behaviour.• She lived on an island and slept, she wrote, on the beach.• And this on an island where there appeared to be next to no gold and a few sparse cotton plants.• He was asked to determine by investigation whether a given place was on an island or on the mainland.Origin island Old English igland, from ig “island” + land 