Mainland Meaning
/ˈmeɪnlənd/Definition, CEFR level C1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
Listen pronunciation
Definition
nounThe continent; the principal land, as distinguished from islands or a peninsula.
nounThe principal island of a group.
Sentence Examples
We took a ferry from the island to the mainland.
The island is cut off far from the mainland.
CEFR Practice Quiz
After a week on the island, they took a ferry back to the ____.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The ferry takes travelers from the small island to the ____, where there are more shops and services.
Word Origin & History
From Middle English mayne londe; equivalent to main + land. Compare Scots mayn-land, magan-land, madin-land (“mainland”), Faroese meginland (“mainland”), Icelandic meginland (“mainland”).
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"[…]I got to the mainland, where, to my great comfort, I clambered up the cliffs of the shore and sat me down upon the grass, free from danger and quite out of the reach of the water."
— 1719 May 6 (Gregorian calendar), [Daniel Defoe], The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, […], London: […] W[illiam] Taylor […], →OCLC:
"Other examples of nonhuman self-domestication in the wild exist—for instance, the Zanzibar red colobus monkey diverged from the mainland African red colobus in similar ways during its island isolation—but bonobos are the closest and most relevant to us."
— 2019 January 29, Melvin Konner, “A Bold New Theory Proposes That Humans Tamed Themselves”, in The Atlantic, →ISSN, archived from the original on 09 Jul 2019:
"All of the people I interviewed were from Protestant backgrounds, with proud British traditions. Yet when they set foot on the mainland, they were met at times with jeering, derision and othering from the very people with whom they were raised to believe they had the most in common."
— 2024 February 10, Emma DeSouza, “The most effective cure for Northern Irish unionism? Attitudes in England”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:
Explore More C1 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
After a week on the island, they took a ferry back to the ____.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The ferry takes travelers from the small island to the ____, where there are more shops and services.