Look up mainland in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Mainland is usually the continental part of a region, as opposed to the islands nearby, or, if the region is entirely insular, the largest of the several islands comprising the region. Sometimes the residents are called "the Mainlanders". As a result of the usually larger area of mainland, there are significantly more mainlanders than islanders, and mainlander culture and politics sometimes threaten to dominate those of the islands.

Prominent uses of the term include:

• Mainland Australia, as opposed to Tasmania.
• British Mainland (i.e. the island of Great Britain), as opposed to the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man, Northern Ireland (although when used to differentiate Britain from Ireland it can be considered an offensive usage) or any other British island. On the Isle of Wight in 1982, Paul Theroux overheard residents at Ventnor: "and now they were talking about 'the mainland', as if we were far at sea and not twenty minutes by ferry from Portsmouth".^[1]
• Mainland Canada, as opposed to Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, Cape Breton Island or Vancouver Island;
• Mainland China, as opposed to the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau (but including the island of Hainan), and Taiwan (and other areas administered by the Republic of China);
• Mainland Denmark, as opposed to the Faroe Islands and Greenland.
• Mainland Estonia, as opposed to Saaremaa, Hiiumaa and other Western Estonian islands.
• Mainland Europe, another term for Continental Europe used in many parts of the English-speaking world, but generally not in the United Kingdom; usually in Great Britain, and sometimes in Ireland, mainland Europe is referred to as The Continent.
• Mainland Finland, as opposed to Åland Islands;
• Mainland France (Le Continent), as opposed to Corsica; in relation to its Overseas Departments and Territories, the term Metropolitan France (France Métropolitaine) is more commonly used;
• Mainland Ireland as opposed to its offshore islands. Note that "the mainland" in Northern Ireland is ambiguous between this sense and the preceding one; using the phrase to mean "Great Britain as opposed to Northern Ireland" is considered objectionable by many Nationalists. In Ireland the term "the mainland" is also used as an alternative means to refer to the land mass of Europe
• Mainland Japan and Honshū, as opposed to the rest of the Japanese islands (see also Home Islands);
• Mainland Korea as opposed to Jeju and Ulleung Islands
• the Nova Scotian mainland, as opposed to Cape Breton Island;
• Mainland Portugal as opposed to Azores and Madeira Islands.
• Mainland Scotland as opposed to its many offshore islands including the Western Isles and Orkney or Shetland.
• Mainland Spain as opposed to the Balearic and Canary Islands, the North African cities of Ceuta and Melilla, the island of Alborán and other minor exclaves on Northern Africa (called the Plazas de soberanía). In Spain the terms "España peninsular" or simply "La Península" are often used.
• Mainland United States, as opposed to the state of Hawaii and overseas territories (the terms "U.S. Mainland" and "The Mainland" are commonly used in Hawaii, but not in the U.S. mainland itself where "continental United States," which also excludes Alaska, is more commonly used instead); note: this latter term is also more precisely referred to as the "contiguous United States."
• The South Island of New Zealand is sometimes jocularly called the Mainland, especially by South Islanders. Though it has a far smaller population, it is slightly larger than the North Island.
• The largest islands of the Orkney and Shetland Islands; see Mainland, Orkney and Mainland, Shetland.

The term is used on multiple levels. To someone in Tasmania, continental Australia is the mainland; but to residents of King Island, Flinders Island, and the other surrounding islands, Tasmania itself is the mainland.

[edit] Notes