Isle

How to spell isle

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce isle

What does isle mean?

1. nounA small island, often used poetically or in place names.

Isle in a sentence

• The ferry crosses to the isle twice a day.

• They retired to a quiet isle off the coast of Scotland.

Where does isle come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word travelled into English from the Old French ile, which simply meant 'island' and came from the Latin insula, the ordinary Latin word for a piece of land surrounded by water. In its earliest English use, written around the 1300s, it had no 's' at all and was spelled 'ile', matching the way it sounded. During the Renaissance, scholars who admired Latin deliberately reinserted a silent 's' to make the spelling resemble the Latin insula, even though nobody pronounced it; this is exactly why the modern spelling carries a letter you never hear. The same Latin insula gives us 'insular', 'peninsula', and 'insulate', all of which keep the 's' that 'isle' hides silently. That decorative, unspoken 's' is the heart of the spelling trap, and it is also why 'isle' looks so different from its sound-alike 'aisle'.

How the word is built

• isle (from Old French ile, ultimately Latin insula: island); the silent 's' was later inserted to mirror the Latin spelling

Words that sound like isle

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• aisle: A passage between rows of seats or shelves, such as in a shop, church, plane, or theatre.
• i'll: A contraction of 'I will' or 'I shall', expressing the speaker's own future action or intention.