continent
Pluralcontinents
Pluralcontinents
- 1Any of the traditional main divisions of the Earth's land surface, each a mainland with its conventionally associated islands.
Antarctica is the only continent with no permanent human population.
Medieval trade routes once linked markets across three continents.
Note
Tradition draws these borders, not rock. The seven names are a cultural map laid over the geological landmasses. Europe and Asia are counted apart though they form one unbroken mass, and islands are assigned to a continent by custom. When people list the continents or ask how many there are, this is the sense they mean, so the answer rests on convention rather than measurement.
- 2One of the principal continuous landmasses on a planet's surface, separated from others by water or geological features, sometimes taken to include its continental shelves and their islands.
Plate movements slowly carried the continents apart over hundreds of millions of years.
Mars has vast highland regions that some scientists compare to a continent on Earth.
Similarlandmass
Note
Land that holds together is the image at the root: Latin continens, the noun use of continēre, "to contain." It is the geologist's sense, defined by unbroken land rather than by names, which is why it can be applied to any planet. Tennyson in 1850 imagines "the dust of continents to be," land still forming. Whether a shelf and its islands count is a judgment call.
- 3Having voluntary control over one's bladder or bowels; able to regulate urination and defecation.
The patient remained continent after the surgery, to her doctors' relief.
Nursing staff record whether each resident is continent or needs assistance.
Oppositeincontinent
- 4Exercising self-restraint over one's bodily appetites or passions, especially sexual desire; temperate and controlled.
Medieval clergy were expected to remain continent throughout their lives.
He prided himself on being continent in food, drink, and speech alike.
Similarchaste, abstinent, celibate, temperate, abstemious
Oppositeincontinent, intemperate, dissolute
Note
The living adjective arrived by a different road from the noun: through Old French, from Latin continentem, "holding together," so a continent person holds desire in. It is a virtue word, at home in moral and religious writing. T. E. Lawrence praises men "simple, continent, enduring"; Diarmaid MacCulloch's A History of Christianity describes marriage as a remedy for those who "could not be continent."
- 5
- 6A large unbroken landmass considered apart from its islands and peninsulas; the mainland, especially the joined Old World landmass of Europe, Asia, and Africa.
Note
Here the contrast is with islands: the continent is the main, the mainland a coast looks across to. John Donne's 1624 meditation builds on exactly that pairing: "euery man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine." The general sense is obsolete. It survives capitalized in the Continent, the Old World mainland, so use it today only in that fixed phrase.
- 7Any continuous tract or stretch of land; a country or connected region considered as a whole.
Note
An older use carries no sense of scale: any stretch of land counted as one whole, a region or a whole country. It is obsolete, and a modern reader meeting "a continent of vineyards" will hear hyperbole, taking it as the figurative expanse rather than a plain description. In historical writing, read it as "tract" or "region" and the sentence settles.
- 8Dry land; the solid ground as distinct from sea, river, or flood.
The carkas with the streame was carried downe, / But th’head fell backeward on the continent.
1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie QueeneNote
Here the word simply means land set against water, with no thought of size. Spenser's The Faerie Queene (1590) shows how small the scale could be. A carcass is carried off by a stream, while the head "fell backeward on the continent," onto the bank. The sense is obsolete. In modern prose "dry land" or "shore" does the work, and continent would be misread as a landmass.
- 9Unbroken or uninterrupted; connected and continuous, whether through space or through time.
The chronicler records a continent fever that held the king for nine days.
The northeast part of Asia is, if not continent with the west side of America, yet certainly it is the least disjoined by sea of all that coast.
1843, John McIntosh, The Origin of the North American IndiansNote
An obsolete adjective that kept the Latin sense of continentem, "continuous; holding together," brought into English through Old French. In space it takes to or with: Marlowe's Tamburlaine has lands "continent to your Dominions," and John McIntosh in 1843 hedges on whether Asia is continent with America. In time it described a fever that never broke. Modern writers say continuous; the same idea of unbroken land survives in the landmass noun.
- 10Serving to restrain, limit, or hold something back; restraining or opposing in force or effect.
Dikes and continent banks held the river within its course.
Have a continent forbearance till the speed of his rage goes slower.
c. 1599, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”Note
The restraint here points outward: a law, a bank or a check that holds something else back. Shakespeare has a pompous letter invoke an "established proclaimed Edict and continent Cannon," a law that forbids. "Have a continent forbearance" sits on the line with the self-restraint sense, since the forbearance holds back the speaker as well. The sense is obsolete, and restraining replaces it.
- 11Holding or containing something, or capable of doing so; able to receive and keep contents.
The harbor was scarcely continent of so great a fleet.
A cistern continent of rainwater stood behind the house.
Note
Holding is all the adjective does here, as the partner of the noun for a vessel. It names whatever can take in and keep contents. It typically takes of before what is held, as in a harbor continent of a fleet. It now reads as obsolete Latinate prose, and containing or able to hold replaces it.
- 12The body or solid mass of a celestial object such as the sun or moon.
Through the new telescope, the continent of the moon showed mountains and shadowed plains.
Comets seemed to pass before the very continent of the sun.
Note
Older writers once used the word for a heavenly body's whole mass, its bulk as one bounded thing. A modern reader of "the continent of the moon" will picture a region on its surface, as in the planetary landmass. The obsolete sense needs flagging in older texts because it means the moon itself, entire, not a stretch of it.
- 13A container or vessel; anything that holds or encloses something else.
The apothecary kept each powder in its own glass continent.
Poets called the body the continent of the soul.
Note
The noun sits closest to its Latin root, "to contain": it names the thing that does the holding, whether a vessel, a casket or the body around the soul. It is obsolete, and container or vessel replaces it in modern prose. The idea did not vanish entirely. It narrowed into the sense of capacity, the room a holder offers.
- 14Available space or room; the capacity of something to hold or admit.
The chamber's narrow continent could not receive so large a company.
Sailors stowed the barrels wherever the hold offered continent.
Note
This is the room a thing offers, abstracted from the vessel itself. It behaves as a mass noun and takes no article: a hold "offered continent," a chamber had little continent. It is obsolete, replaced today by space, room or capacity. In older texts, substitute one of those and the meaning comes clear.
- 15The essential points of something considered together; the sum, summary, or substance.
The preface offered the continent of the whole argument in a single page.
Her speech delivered the continent of the council's long deliberations.
Note
A document can hold a whole fortune's substance, and that is the image here. In Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice a scroll is "the continent and summary of my fortune." The pairing is the point: continent holds the matter, summary states it, and the doublet presses them together as near-synonyms. The sense is obsolete, and substance or gist carries it today without a geographic misreading.
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Origins
Borrowed from Latin continens, the noun use of the present participle of continēre ("to contain").
From Middle English contynent, from Old French continent, from Latin continentem ("continuous; holding together"), the present participle of continēre ("to contain").