an area of land almost completely surrounded by water except for an isthmus connecting it with the mainland.
the Peninsula,
Spain and Portugal together; Iberian Peninsula; Iberia.
a district in SE Virginia between the York and James rivers: Civil War battles.
The noun peninsula is sometimes confused with the adjective peninsular: the Iberian peninsula (not peninsular )
1530–40; < Latin paenīnsula, equivalent to paen- pen- + īnsula island
Part of Italy is a peninsula, and it's a pretty famous one, because it looks like a boot. A peninsula juts into the water but has at least a narrow a connection to land. If the boot broke off from Italy just below the "knee," it would be an island. The word peninsula, which entered English in the 16th century, comes from the Latin words paene, "almost," and insula, "island." Some confuse an island with a peninsula because both are surrounded by so much water, but a peninsula is connected to a mainland at some point, while an island is completely encircled by water. In most cases, a peninsula is narrow and long, resembling an arm or leg.
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Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
French firefighters were "on the offensive" insisted commander Eric Pitault, standing in the middle of a 50-metre-wide, 25-kilometre-long firebreak cut with the help of civilian volunteers on the Cap Ferret peninsula.
From Barron's ● Jul. 28, 2026
French authorities have ordered the evacuation of the Cap Ferret peninsula on the south-west coast, with hundreds of people escaping the area by boat.
From BBC ● Jul. 24, 2026
On Friday, authorities ordered the evacuation of 40,000 of people from Cap Ferret, a peninsula in southwestern France that draws wealthy vacationers to its white sand beaches.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 24, 2026
Gironde prefect Sophie Brocas ordered the "final phase" of the peninsula evacuation early on Friday morning.
From BBC ● Jul. 24, 2026
Tycho Brahe was born in Knudstrup, on the southern tip of the Scandinavian peninsula, on 14 December 1546.
From "The Scientists" by John Gribbin
"Extreme conditions are looming for Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, in addition to France, the Iberian Peninsula... where the situation is expected to worsen, including in Portugal starting today," commissioner Hadja Lahbib said.
From Barron's ● Jul. 28, 2026
It has been declared just once before, when a major power blackout affected the Iberian Peninsula last year.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 24, 2026
But right now it is the Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula that are worrying analysts the most.
From BBC ● Jul. 23, 2026
Chicxulub is the enormous impact crater buried beneath Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 18, 2026
One afternoon, somewhere west of the Batangan Peninsula, we came across an abandoned pagoda.
From "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien
"In all these periods, the present-day islands and peninsulas of Ayvalık would have formed interior zones within an expansive terrestrial environment," explains co-author Professor Kadriye Özçelik, from Ankara University.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 12, 2025
BGS said it received reports from residents from Mull and surrounding islands and many on the mainland, especially from the Morvern and Moidart peninsulas.
From BBC ● Jan. 30, 2024
“There’s a sequence of island peninsulas that surround the harbor with forts on all of them, and we thought that made for rich pickings as far as the nautical side of the movie.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 10, 2024
In the San Juan Islands, the Kitsap and Olympic peninsulas and Whidbey Island, ferries are the link to work, school, doctor visits, weddings, funerals and loved ones.
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 20, 2023
The decline in sea levels let the two peninsulas join up.
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
