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The word island comes from Old English with the meaning "watery land". An island in a river or lake may be called an Eyot. Bermuda is a large island in the Atlantic. It takes many years for coral islands to emerge from the sea.
Island
An island is an area of land, smaller than a continent that is completely surrounded by water. Islands are of two types, continental and oceanic. Continental islands were once part of a continent. The sea has sometimes divided the islands from the continent by carving a channel between them. Sometimes, the sea has flooded coastal land and only the tops of hills have been left above the water, where they form islands. If the level of the sea dropped, these islands, such as those off the coast of Maine, would become part of the continent again. Oceanic islands were never part of continents, but were produced when volcanoes on the sea floor erupted. The lava from the volcano piled up on the sea floor until it stuck out of the sea, forming an island.
The islands of Hawaii were formed in this way. In 1963, an island called Surtsey emerged off the coast of Iceland, after a volcanic eruption on the sea floor. Some islands, called atolls, are made of coral.
