islet
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(ī'lĭt) 
n.
A very small island: rocky islets off the coast.
n.
A very small island: rocky islets off the coast.
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islet
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islet
IN BRIEF: n. - A small piece of land surrounded by water.
Tutor's tip: Put the lace through the last "eyelet" (a small eye or hole designed to receive a lace) of your shoe and let's walk around the "islet" (a small island).
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any small group of cells that is structurally distinct from the surrounding tissue, especially the islets of Langerhans.
| ischemia, irreversible process, irreversible competitive antagonist | |
| islet-1, islet-activating protein, islets of Langerhans |
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An island.
- i. cell — one of the cells making up the islet of Langerhans.
- i. cell neoplasia — occur mostly in old dogs and morphologically they occur as adenomas or adenocarcinomas. Functionally they appear only in the form of hyperinsulinism and hypoglycemia. Rarely there are gastrin-secreting tumors causing a zollinger–ellison syndrome.
- i's of Langerhans — irregular microscopic structures scattered throughout the pancreas and comprising its endocrine portion. They contain the alpha cells, which secrete the hyperglycemic factor glucagon; the beta cells, which secrete insulin, and whose degeneration is one of the causes of diabetes mellitus; and the delta cells, which secrete somatostatin.
- pancreatic i. — see islets of Langerhans (above).
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categories related to 'islet'
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Not to be confused with eyelet.
For the Welsh indie band, see Islet (band).
- For human anatomy, see Islets of Langerhans
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Look up islet in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
An islet is a very small island.
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Contents
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Types
As suggested by its origin as islette, an Old French diminutive of "isle",[1] use of the term implies small size, but little attention is given to drawing an upper limit on its applicability.
- Rock - A "rock", in the sense of a type of islet, is a landform composed of rock, lying offshore, uninhabited, and having at most minimal vegetation.
- Sandbar - An exposed sandbar is another type of islet.
- Sea stack - A thin, vertical landform jutting out of a body of water.
- Subsidiary islets - A more technical application is to small land features, isolated by water, lying off the shore of a larger island. Likewise, any emergent land in an atoll is also called an islet.
- Tidal island - Often small islands (not necessarily always islets) which lie off the mainland of an area, being connected to it in low tide and isolated in high tide.
- River island - A small islet within the current of a river.
- Ait or eyot - A term for river islands that occur within the River Thames in England.
Synonymous terms
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Look up islet in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
- Holm or Holmen is a common suffix too in Nordic and northern European countries ("holme" means "islet" in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, although the meaning is more precise: a holme in Swedish is usually big enough to have wood and some fresh water but too small for a village; smaller islets have other names – there is an intricate name system to make it possible to remember and recognize different islets, hundreds of which have been important in some archipelagos).
- In the Caribbean and West Atlantic, islets are often called cays or keys. Rum Cay in the Bahamas and the Florida Keys off Florida are examples of islets.
- In the Channel Islands, they are often identified by the suffix -hou from the Norse -holm.
- 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 and around Polynesia, islets are widely known by the term motu, from the term for the coral-rubble islets common to the region.
List of islets
There are thousands of islets on Earth: approximately 24,000 islands and islets in the Stockholm archipelago alone. The following is a list of example islets from around the world.
- Águila Islet, the southernmost point of The Americas
- Anton Rock, in Buck Lake, Ontario
- Aplin Islet (Queensland)
- Ásmundarstakkur, Faroe Islands
- Ball's Pyramid, South Pacific
- Bay Islet or See Chau, Hong Kong
- Black Rock, South Atlantic
- Blenkinsop Islet, British Columbia, Canada
- Boundary Islet, Australia
- Briggs Islet, southeastern Australia
- Bushy Islet (Queensland)
- Chão, in the Madeira Islands, Portugal
- Cholmondeley Islet (Queensland)
- Clubes Island, Brasília, Brazil
- Columbretes Islands, Spain
- Cone Islet, southeastern Australia
- Douglas Islet (Queensland)
- Dry Tortugas, Florida Keys, USA
- Dugay Islet, southeastern Australia
- Edwards Islet, southeastern Australia
- Fairway Rock, Bering Strait
- Fastnet Rock, Ireland
- Filfla, southern Malta
- Flinders Islet, South Coast NSW Australia
- Formigas, in the Azores islands
- Gáshólmur, Faroe Islands
- Granite Island (Australia), Victor Harbor, South Australia.
- Galatasaray Islet, Istanbul, Turkey
- Hoy Islet, Lake Constance
- Halfway Islet (Queensland)
- Herald Island, Arctic Ocean
- Imia/Kardak, Greece
- Isles of Scilly, United Kingdom
- Islets of Caroline Island, in Kiribati
- Islets of Mauritius
- Islote de las Nubes (Alborán), Western Mediterranean
- Jardine Islet (Queensland)
- Jethou, Bailiwick of Guernsey
- Keelung Islet, off the northern shore of Taiwan
- Kolbeinsey, Iceland
- Liancourt Rocks, administered by South Korea, claimed by Japan
- Lihou Island, Bailiwick of Guernsey
- Lopransholmur, in Faroe Islands
- Magra Islet (Queensland)
- Managaha, Saipan
- Martin Islet (New South Wales)
- Mid Woody Islet, southeastern Australia
- Milman Islet (Queensland)
- Modia Islets, located in the Ionian Sea of the Western coast of Greece.
- Monchique Islet, Europe's westernmost point, in the Azores, Portugal
- Montecristo, off the shore of Italy
- Oodaaq, Greenland
- Parece Vela, West Pacific
- Perejil Island, Strait of Gibraltar
- Penguin Islet (Tasmania)
- Rockall, North Atlantic
- Saint Peter and Saint Paul rocks, equatorial Atlantic
- Salas y Gómez, Northeast from Easter Island
- Saunders Islet (Queensland)
- Seacrow Islet, southeastern Australia
- Shag Rocks, South Atlantic
- Silver Islet, Ontario
- Sinclair Islet (Queensland)
- Skull Islet, in British Columbia, Canada
- Star Keys/Motuhope, New Zealand
- Saltholm, small Islet in Oresund west of Copenhagen
- Sue Islet (Queensland)
- Sumbiarholmur, Faroe Islands
- Sunday Islet (Queensland)
- Thomson Islet (Queensland)
- Tindhólmur, Faroe Islands
- Vilkitsky Island, Arctic Ocean
- Wallace Islet (Queensland)
- Wachusett Reef, Ernest Legouve Reef, and Maria Theresa Reef, South Pacific Ocean
- Westward Islet, in the Pitcairn Islands
References
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
Translations:
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Islet
Dansk (Danish)
n. - lille ø, holm
idioms:
- islets of Langerhans Langerhansøerne
idioms:
- islets of Langerhans îlot de Langerhans
Deutsch (German)
n. - kleine Insel
idioms:
- islets of Langerhans (Med.) Langerhanssche Inseln, (Gruppe von Pankreaszellen, die Insulin produzieren)
Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (γεωγρ.) νησίδα, νησάκι
idioms:
- islets of Langerhans (ιατρ.) νησίδια του Λάνγκερχανς
idioms:
- islets of Langerhans isole di Langerhans
Português (Portuguese)
n. - ilhota (f)
idioms:
- islets of Langerhans células (f) produtoras da insulina (Histol.)
Русский (Russian)
островок, обособленный кусочек животной или растительной ткани
idioms:
- islets of Langerhans панкреатический островок (мед.)
Español (Spanish)
n. - isleta, islote
idioms:
- islets of Langerhans islotes de Langerhans (anatomía)
Svenska (Swedish)
n. - liten ö, holme
中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
小岛
idioms:
- islets of Langerhans 郎格汉斯氏岛
中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 小島
idioms:
- islets of Langerhans 郎格漢斯氏島
idioms:
- islets of Langerhans ランゲルハンス島
العربيه (Arabic)
(الاسم) الجزيرة : الجزيرة الصغيرة
עברית (Hebrew)
n. - אי קטן, איון
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