Is Australia an island?

One of the things I’ve found since starting to put quizzes online is that people online are much more pedantic than people in a normal quiz environment. This is a good thing though because sometimes interesting points come from this, and one this week was a discussion as to what constitutes an island.

Sparked by the question “What is the largest island in the world?” I had several people respond with Australia, when in fact I was looking for Greenland.

The issue seems to lie around what constitutes an island and what constitutes a continent. One definition is: an island is a mass of land that is both “entirely surrounded by water” and also “smaller than a continent.”.

So, once again we’re a bit stymied because of how we’re defining continents – it turns out there isn’t really a strict definition of what a continent is. One way is to look at it is in geographic terms; Australia is on a separate tectonic plate, while Greenland shares a plate with North America. However this doesn’t always apply as Europe shares a tectonic plate with Asia, but is considered a separate continent mainly for cultural reasons.

Then there’s size, surely that plays a factor? Australia is nearly four times bigger than Greenland, if they were closer in size then perhaps Greenland would be considered a continent, or both of them considered islands.

To sum up, some definitions if taken literally would mean that yes, you could consider Australia an island, but the general consensus when you look into it, is that Australia is a continent and therefore Greenland is the largest island in the world.