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• continent
  continent

  noun

  one of the main landmasses of the globe, usually reckoned as seven in number (Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Australia, and Antarctica).
• Continent
  Continent

  noun

  the mainland of Europe as distinguished from the British Isles

continent

American  

[kon-tn-uhnt] / ˈkɒn tn ənt /

noun

• continents
  plural

1. one of the main landmasses of the globe, usually reckoned as seven in number (Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Australia, and Antarctica).

2. a comparable landmass on another planet.

3. the mainland, as distinguished from islands or peninsulas.

4. the Continent, the mainland of Europe, as distinguished from the British Isles.

5. a continuous tract or extent, as of land.

6. Archaic. something that serves as a container or boundary.

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adjective

1. exercising or characterized by restraint in relation to the desires or passions and especially to sexual desires; temperate.

2. able to control urinary and fecal discharge.

3. Obsolete. containing; being a container; capacious.

4. Obsolete. restraining or restrictive.

5. Obsolete. continuous; forming an uninterrupted tract, as land.

continent ¹ British  

/ ˈkɒntɪnənt /

adjective

1. able to control urination and defecation

2. exercising self-restraint, esp from sexual activity; chaste

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continent ² British  

/ ˈkɒntɪnənt, ˌkɒntɪˈnɛntəl /

noun

1. one of the earth's large land masses (Asia, Australia, Africa, Europe, North and South America, and Antarctica)

2. that part of the earth's crust that rises above the oceans and is composed of sialic rocks. Including the continental shelves, the continents occupy 30 per cent of the earth's surface

3. obsolete

   1. mainland as opposed to islands

   2. a continuous extent of land

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Continent ³ British  

/ ˈkɒntɪnənt /

noun

1. the mainland of Europe as distinguished from the British Isles

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continent Scientific  

/ kŏn′tə-nənt /

1. One of the seven great landmasses of the Earth. The continents are Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America.

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• continence
  noun
• continental
  adjective
• uncontinent
  adjective
• continentally
  adverb
• continently
  adverb
• uncontinently
  adverb

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• continents
  plural

Etymology

Origin of continent

First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English, from Latin continent-, stem of continēns “holding together,” present participle of continēre “to hold together, keep in position,” equivalent to con- con- + -tinēre, combining form of tenēre “to hold”; see contain

Explanation

A continent is one of the seven largest landmasses found on Earth. Asia, Australia, and Africa are three continents. Can you name the other four? Some folks forget the continent of Antarctica, because so few humans live there—none of them permanently. And you might be surprised how many people think that Africa is a country and not a continent. Due to a process known as continental drift, the extremely slow movement of the continents across the face of the globe, our world looks very different from the way it did 100 million years ago.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

continent Continent continents

With many on the continent still reeling, some among the scientific community said there was nothing unexpected about this summer.

From Barron's ● Aug. 25, 2026

“A lot of the people that are in detention centers are the Indigenous people of the North American continent, the South American continent,” she continued.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 24, 2026

At first they arrived from the continent – France, Italy and Spain – but now many are heading north on coolcations from within the UK as well.

From BBC ● Aug. 20, 2026

During the Miocene, a geological period that lasted for millions of years, a vast lake covered a large portion of the continent.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 19, 2026

It looks like a piece of Yorkshire or Cumbria transplanted to the American continent.

From "A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson

Newcastle have shifted policy this summer, targeting younger players on the Continent, with Lukas Hornicek the club's oldest arrival by a reasonable distance at 24 years of age.

From BBC ● Aug. 6, 2026

European regulators are also feeling the heat, with the French start-up Mistral recently presenting in Brussels a 22-point plan to accelerate AI development on the Continent.

From Barron's ● Apr. 25, 2026

This particular form of instability—in which electoral outcomes haven’t caught up with voters’ frustrations—has long plagued polities on the Continent, where proportional voting systems accelerate the fracturing of authority in parliaments.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 16, 2026

In this uncertain context, Poland's subsoil appears to be a major asset for the energy sovereignty of the Old Continent.

From Barron's ● Apr. 3, 2026

Colin Maclaurin and Brook Taylor, perhaps the best British mathematicians in the era of isolation from the Continent, discovered how to use calculus to rewrite functions in a totally different form.

From "Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea" by Charles Seife

They travel beneath continents after tectonic plates begin to separate and have previously been linked to the eruption of diamond volcanoes and mysterious phases of uplift within continents.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 25, 2026

We have traveled from the illusion that humanity had left global wars behind forever to the stark prospect of a third world war that could span continents and have devastating global consequences.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 23, 2026

"Our findings could help geologists reinterpret other ancient continental interiors where similarly large gaps occur in records, offering a better understanding of how Earth's continents have changed over hundreds of millions of years."

From Science Daily ● Aug. 21, 2026

England has the most active players of all countries with three million, and Africa has the most of all continents.

From BBC ● Jul. 23, 2026

In either case, of the five habitable continents, North America and South America are the ones with the shortest human prehistories.

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond