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CONTINENT
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
The European mainland
Example:
Englishmen like to visit the Continent but they wouldn't like to live there
Classified under:
Nouns denoting spatial position
Instance hypernyms:
mainland (the main land mass of a country or continent; as distinguished from an island or peninsula)
Holonyms ("Continent" is a part of...):
Europe (the 2nd smallest continent (actually a vast peninsula of Eurasia); the British use 'Europe' to refer to all of the continent except the British Isles)
Derivation:
Continental (of or pertaining to or typical of Europe)
Sense 2
Meaning:
One of the large landmasses of the earth
Example:
pioneers had to cross the continent on foot
Classified under:
Nouns denoting natural objects (not man-made)
Hypernyms ("continent" is a kind of...):
land mass; landmass (a large continuous extent of land)
Meronyms (parts of "continent"):
craton (the part of a continent that is stable and forms the central mass of the continent; typically Precambrian)
subcontinent (a large and distinctive landmass (as India or Greenland) that is a distinct part of some continent)
Instance hyponyms:
Africa (the second largest continent; located to the south of Europe and bordered to the west by the South Atlantic and to the east by the Indian Ocean)
Antarctic continent; Antarctica (an extremely cold continent at the south pole almost entirely below the Antarctic Circle; covered by an ice cap up to 13,000 feet deep)
Asia (the largest continent with 60% of the earth's population; it is joined to Europe on the west to form Eurasia; it is the site of some of the world's earliest civilizations)
Australia (the smallest continent; between the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean)
Eurasia (the land mass formed by the continents of Europe and Asia)
Europe (the 2nd smallest continent (actually a vast peninsula of Eurasia); the British use 'Europe' to refer to all of the continent except the British Isles)
Gondwanaland (a hypothetical continent that (according to plate tectonic theory) broke up later into India and Australia and Africa and South America and Antarctica)
Laurasia (a hypothetical continent that (according to plate tectonic theory) broke up later into North America and Europe and Asia)
North America (a continent (the third largest) in the western hemisphere connected to South America by the Isthmus of Panama)
Pangaea; Pangea ((plate tectonics) a hypothetical continent including all the landmass of the earth prior to the Triassic period when it split into Laurasia and Gondwanaland)
South America (a continent in the western hemisphere connected to North America by the Isthmus of Panama)
Derivation:
continental (being or concerning or limited to a continent especially the continents of North America or Europe)
continental (of or relating to or characteristic of a continent)
II. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Abstaining from sexual intercourse
Example:
celibate priests
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Similar:
chaste (morally pure (especially not having experienced sexual intercourse))
Derivation:
continence; continency (the exercise of self constraint in sexual matters)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Having control over urination and defecation
Classified under:
Antonym:
incontinent (not having control over urination and defecation)
Derivation:
contain (contain or hold; have within)
continence (voluntary control over urinary and fecal discharge)
Context examples:
On the other, the plans of the Bruce-Partington submarine are presumably already on the Continent.
(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
“Is it fair to break a dozen hearts in order to intoxicate one with rapture? I’m off to the Continent next week.”
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
A person having origins in the original peoples of the Indian sub-continent.
(Asian Indian, NCI Thesaurus)
Denotes a person having origins in one of the indigenous peoples of North America, who lived on the continent prior to the European colonization.
(American Indian, NCI Thesaurus)
Thousands of previously uncharted mountains rising from the seafloor, called seamounts, have emerged through the map, along with new clues about the formation of the continents.
(New map uncovers thousands of unseen seamounts on ocean floor, NSF)
The researchers say that the cancer first spread from Europe to the Americas around 500 years ago, when European settlers first arrived at the continent by sea.
(The curious tale of the cancer ‘parasite’ that sailed the seas, University of Cambridge)
Although many fossils of titanosaurians have been discovered around the globe, especially in South America, few have been recovered from the continent of Africa.
(Paleontologists discover new species of titanosaurian dinosaur in Tanzania, NSF)
The company assembled in the long salle a manger, that evening, was such as one sees nowhere but on the Continent.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
She left this morning with her husband by the 5:15 train from Charing Cross for the Continent.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
I am not aware that any other type of language exists in this continent, and I have notes of more than a hundred.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
