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• mainland
  mainland

  noun

  the principal land of a country, region, etc., as distinguished from adjacent islands or a peninsula.
• Mainland
  Mainland

  noun

  the largest of the Shetland Islands. About 200 sq. mi. (520 sq. km).

mainland

¹ American  

[mayn-land, -luhnd] / ˈmeɪnˌlænd, -lənd /

noun

• mainlands
  plural

1. the principal land of a country, region, etc., as distinguished from adjacent islands or a peninsula.

   the mainland of Greece.

2. any part of or all of the continental United States or conterminous United States, especially from the perspective of someone in a geographically detached U.S. state or territory, such as Hawaii or Guam.

   I’m not sure where on the mainland Jasmine went to college, but it may have been Milwaukee.

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Mainland ² American  

[mayn-land, -luhnd] / ˈmeɪnˌlænd, -lənd /

noun

1. the largest of the Shetland Islands. About 200 sq. mi. (520 sq. km).

2. Pomona.

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Mainland ¹ British  

/ ˈmeɪnlənd /

noun

1. an island off N Scotland: the largest of the Shetland Islands. Chief town: Lerwick. Pop: 17 550 (2001). Area: about 583 sq km (225 sq miles)

2. Also called: Pomona. an island off N Scotland: the largest of the Orkney Islands. Chief town: Kirkwall. Pop: 15 315 (2001). Area: 492 sq km (190 sq miles)

3. a South Islanders' name for South Island

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mainland ² British  

/ ˈmeɪnlənd /

noun

1. the main part of a land mass as opposed to an island or peninsula

2. a particular landmass as viewed from a nearby island with which it has close links, such as Great Britain as viewed from Northern Ireland or continental Australia as viewed from Tasmania

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• mainlander
  noun

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• mainlands
  plural

Etymology

Origin of mainland

First recorded in 1325–75; Middle English; see origin at main ¹, land

Explanation

A mainland is the land covering a continent, as opposed to islands off its coast. When you take the ferry back after visiting Block Island, you can say you're "returning to the mainland." The rocky coast of the mainland might make for a difficult landing in your rowboat — or you might enter a race that requires you to swim from the mainland to a tiny island and back. You could also refer to "mainland United States" to distinguish it from the island state of Hawaii, and its residents might even call you a mainlander when you vacation there.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

mainland Mainland mainlands

“Anything that can be done to build the supply chain up outside of that mainland Chinese ecosystem, it’s a good thing,” said Emeneker, who runs a drone-training startup, Kill Zone.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 13, 2026

It was the first hurricane of an Atlantic season tamed by a historic El Nino weather phenomenon, and the first hurricane since 2024 to hit the US mainland.

From Barron's ● Oct. 10, 2026

Reservoir levels dropped to 13% at their lowest, forcing emergency shipments of water from the mainland to the 28 people who live on the island.

From BBC ● Oct. 7, 2026

Japan’s Nikkei climbed 2.4%, while indexes in mainland China, Hong Kong and Korea also gained.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 5, 2026

Mr. Rice was furious, but we children figured that the mainland schools were too embarrassed to be beaten out by islanders and so made up a rule to save their faces.

From "Jacob Have I Loved" by Katherine Paterson

In 2008, he joined Mainland Air, an aviation college in New Zealand's Dunedin, before joining Indian airline SpiceJet as a commercial pilot three years later.

From BBC ● Oct. 1, 2026

Mainland customers can no longer deposit money or make investments, only sell their positions.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 9, 2026

Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council spokesperson has since warned that officials who attended the forum could be investigated.

From BBC ● Jun. 22, 2026

The team also reported that tons of SS-H2 based wire had been produced with a factory in Mainland China.

From Science Daily ● May 10, 2026

Mainland Australia’s 300,000 hunter-gatherers were more numerous and less isolated than the Tasmanians but still constituted the smallest and most isolated human population of any of the continents.

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

The marsupials of Australia, the finches on the Galápagos, and many species on the Hawaiian Islands are all unique to their one point of origin, yet they display distant relationships to ancestral species on mainlands.

From Textbooks ● Jun. 9, 2022

Zoologists provide evidence that fewer animal species live on islands than on nearby mainlands.

From Textbooks ● Jun. 9, 2022

The Berlin-based ethnographer Alexa Clay, who studied change agents in her book, “The Misfit Economy,” talks about mainlands, islands and peninsulas.

From New York Times ● Feb. 29, 2016

To reach that stage, there must be mutual confidence, on the island and the mainlands.

From Time Magazine Archive

As an afterthought, he added, “I think,” above the page, as if to signal his last point of departure from the mainlands of biological and theological thought.

From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Related Words

• continent