Islet
An
islet is a small
island.
A
rock, sometimes a synonym for a type of "islet", is a landform comprised of
rock, lying offshore, having no or minimal vegetation, and uninhabited (see
Mōkōlea Rock at left).
An exposed
sandbar would be another type of islet. A more technical application is to small land features, isolated by water, lying off the shore of a larger island. And in related fashion, any emergent land on an
atoll (a type of island) would also be called an islet.
As with many of these terms, the actual size limits of islets are subjective, and vary from area to area, and person to person.
* Islets are often called
cays and
keys in the
Caribbean and West Atlantic.
Rum Cay in the
Bahamas and the
Florida Keys off
Florida are examples of islets.
* In
Scotland and
Ireland, they are often called
inches, from the
Gaelic innis, which originally meant island, but has been supplanted to refer to smaller islands. In Ireland they are often termed
skerries.
* In the
Channel Islands, they are often identified by the suffix
-hou from the Norse
-holmr.
Holm is a common suffix too in
Nordic and northern European lands.
