Peninsula

How to spell peninsula

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce peninsula

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does peninsula mean?

1. nounA piece of land almost surrounded by water but joined to a larger landmass by a narrow strip.

Peninsula in a sentence

• The coastal road follows the edge of the rocky peninsula.

• Spain and Portugal share the same peninsula in southern Europe.

Where does peninsula come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Peninsula comes directly from the Latin paeninsula, a compound that literally means 'almost an island'. It was formed from paene, meaning 'almost' or 'nearly', joined to insula, the ordinary Latin word for 'island'. The image is precise: a piece of land that is surrounded by water on most sides but stays joined to the mainland by a narrow neck, so it is an island in all but one connection. English adopted the word in the middle of the 1500s, keeping the Latin spelling almost intact. The insula root also lies behind 'insular' and 'isle', and remembering that the second half is simply 'insula' (i-n-s-u-l-a) is the surest way to fix the spelling, since the trap is the unstressed 'su' that sounds like a vague 'syuh'.

How the word is built

• pen- (from Latin paene: almost)
• insula (island)