One of the large landmasses on Earth, such as Asia, Africa, or Europe. Continents are bigger than countries and usually separated by oceans or other natural features.
From Latin *continens (terra)* 'continuous (land)', from *continere* 'to hold together'. It originally referred to land that was continuous, not broken up like islands.
The word literally means 'held together' land, which is why we don’t call every tiny island a continent. Different cultures and school systems even disagree on how many continents there are—some say 7, others 6 or even 5—showing that even 'solid land' is partly a human idea.
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