# Australia

Pronunciation: US say "aw-STRAYL-yuh" /ɔˈstɹeɪl.jə/; UK say "o-STRAY-lee-uh" /ɒˈstɹeɪ.liː.ə/; AUS say "uh-STRAYL-yuh" /əˈstɹæɪl.jə/

## Proper noun

1. A country in Oceania consisting of a main island, Tasmania, and smaller islands, formed historically from former British colonies; officially the Commonwealth of Australia, with its capital at Canberra.
   - Simple: A country made up of a big main island, Tasmania, and smaller islands. Its capital city is Canberra.
   - _Australia federated in 1901, uniting six British colonies under one national government._
   - _After living abroad for a decade, she finally became a citizen of Australia._
2. A continent made up of mainland Australia, Tasmania, New Guinea, and the nearby islands that share their continental shelf.
   - Simple: A continent made up of the Australian mainland, Tasmania, New Guinea, and the islands near them.
   - _During the last ice age, low sea levels joined New Guinea and Tasmania to the rest of Australia in a single landmass._
   - _Australia is the smallest and lowest-lying of the world's continents._
3. An island of Oceania, comprising the mainland of the country of the same name.
   - Simple: A very large island in Oceania, south of Asia.
   - _Ferries cross the Bass Strait between Tasmania and Australia._
   - _Tasmania is not part of the island of Australia, even though both belong to the same country._

## Origin

The name goes back to the Latin phrase terra austrālis incōgnita, meaning "unknown southern land," built on auster ("the south wind"), and is first recorded in the 16th century. Matthew Flinders made it popular in 1814. Austria is a distant relative sharing its Proto-Indo-European root, but there the root kept its older meaning of "east" instead of "south."

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/australia (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).