Australia









Australia


Australia [aw-streyl-yuh] Examples noun

  1. a continent SE of Asia, between the Indian and the Pacific oceans. 2,948,366 sq. mi. (7,636,270 sq. km).
  2. Commonwealth of, a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, consisting of the federated states and territories of Australia and Tasmania. 2,974,581 sq. mi. (7,704,165 sq. km). Capital: Canberra.

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019 Examples from the Web for australia Contemporary Examples of australia

  • He did travel to China and Australia while the story was unfolding.

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    Ruben Navarrette Jr.

    January 6, 2015

  • A variety of systems were in place across countries like the United Kingdom, France, and Australia.

    Propaganda, Protest, and Poisonous Vipers: The Cinema War in Korea

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    December 30, 2014

  • “Dwarf mistletoe is freaky, freaky, freaky stuff,” says David Watson, an ecologist at Charles Sturt University in Australia.

    Mistletoe is the Vampire of Plants

    Helen Thompson

    December 21, 2014

  • In 1996, Bourjerdi was granted political asylum and went to Australia as a refugee.

    The Sydney Astrologer Turned Islamic Radical

    Jacob Siegel

    December 16, 2014

  • As a cafe in Sydney, Australia came under siege by a hostage-taking gunman on Monday, those nearby attempted to flee the area.

    In Defense of Uber’s Awful Sydney Surge Pricing

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  • Historical Examples of australia

  • “A cousin from Australia,” she concluded: they had cousins there.

    Weighed and Wanting

    George MacDonald

  • Basil returned to Australia, but disappears from view until 1840.

    The Poems of Henry Kendall

    Henry Kendall

  • You’d have started sooner if you’d been goin’ for the winter to Australia.

    Jan and Her Job

    L. Allen Harker

  • In Australia, Coolgardie had succumbed and Perth was in a panic.

    Spawn of the Comet

    Harold Thompson Rich

  • On another occasion Old Colonial had been away in Australia.

    Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2)

    William Delisle Hay

  • British Dictionary definitions for australia Australia noun

    1. a country and the smallest continent, situated between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific: a former British colony, now an independent member of the Commonwealth, constitutional links with Britain formally abolished in 1986; consists chiefly of a low plateau, mostly arid in the west, with the basin of the Murray River and the Great Dividing Range in the east and the Great Barrier Reef off the NE coast. Official language: English. Religion: Christian majority. Currency: dollar. Capital: Canberra. Pop: 23 029 674 (2013 est). Area: 7 682 300 sq km (2 966 150 sq miles)

    Collins English Dictionary – Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012 Word Origin and History for australia Australia

    from Latin Terra Australis (16c.), from australis “southern” + -ia. A hypothetical southern continent, known as terra australis incognita, had been proposed since 2c. Dutch explorers called the newfound continent New Holland; the current name was suggested 1814 by Matthew Flinders as an improvement over Terra Australis “as being more agreeable to the ear, and an assimilation to the name of the other great portions of the earth” [“Voyage to Terra Australis”]. In 1817 Gov. Lachlan Macquarie, having read Flinders’ suggestion, began using it in official correspondence. The ultimate source is Latin auster “south wind,” hence, “the south country.”

    The Latin sense shift in australis, if it is indeed the same word other Indo-European languages use for east (see aurora), for which Latin uses oriens (see orient), perhaps is based on a false assumption about the orientation of the Italian peninsula, “with shift through ‘southeast’ explained by the diagonal position of the axis of Italy” [Buck]; cf. Walde, Alois, “Lateinisches etymologisches Wörterbuch,” 3rd. ed., vol. 1, p.87; Ernout, Alfred, and Meillet, Alfred, “Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine,” 2nd. ed., p.94. Or perhaps the connection is more ancient, and from PIE root *aus- “to shine,” source of aurora, which also produces words for “burning,” with reference to the “hot” south wind that blows into Italy. Thus auster “(hot) south wind,” metaphorically extended to “south.”

    Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper australia in Culture Australia

    Nation occupying the whole of Australia, the smallest continent, between the Indian Ocean and the southwest Pacific Ocean. Its capital is Canberra, and its largest city is Sydney.

    Note The first settlements there were penal colonies for British convicts.Note Its aboriginal tribes, which still exist today (see aborigines), are thought to have migrated from Southeast Asia twenty thousand years ago. The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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