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continents

Cultural  
  1. The large parts of the surface of the Earth that rise above sea level. The seven major continents are Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America.


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According to the theory of plate tectonics, continents move along piggy-back on the tectonic plates like rafts floating on water.

Continents are made from the lightest rocks in the Earth. Some of these are also the oldest known rocks on Earth, with an age of 3.5 billion years, measured by radioactive dating.

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

European countries have bought territory from each other for centuries, both in Europe and on other continents when they were colonial powers.

From The Wall Street Journal

Still, news that the autocrat who separated them had been captured delivered a sense of long-awaited elation and united the siblings and cousins across continents for a rare four-hour phone call as the night unfolded.

From Los Angeles Times

But that flair for putting on a show helped him forge a life of deception and fraud across three continents.

From BBC

“Suddenly I was spending months dealing with paperwork, relocating across continents, rebuilding my entire life from scratch,” he said.

From The Wall Street Journal

Up a spiral staircase in his Nairobi workshop, surrounded by springs and stems, minute hands and hour chimes, Ravinder maintains a family tradition that spans two anti-colonial uprisings, three continents and five generations.

From The Wall Street Journal