Antilles

IPA/antˈɪliːz/
KK[æntˈɪliz]IPA/æntˈɪliːz/

Antilles — geographical name

1. the long chain of islands that curves through the Caribbean Sea between Florida

1.geographical name
Definition

the long chain of islands that curves through the Caribbean Sea between Florida and Venezuela, made up of the Greater Antilles (such as Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico) and the Lesser Antilles (smaller islands like Martinique and Barbados); the Bahamas are not counted as part of this group.

Example

The cruise ship sailed slowly through the Antilles, stopping at six islands in two weeks.

always preceded by 'the': 'through the Antilles'

Yusuf wrote a school report on the volcanoes of the Antilles after his family visited Martinique.

common collocation: 'the volcanoes / islands of the Antilles'

Common collocations
  • the Greater Antilles
  • the Lesser Antilles
  • the islands of the Antilles
  • throughout the Antilles
  • across the Antilles
Synonyms
  • the West Indies

    broader term — includes the Bahamas, which the Antilles do not

  • the Caribbean

    even broader — refers to the whole sea region, including coastal countries

Grammar Patterns

the Antilles

Usage Note

Always used with the definite article ('the Antilles') and treated as a plural noun: 'the Antilles are…', not 'Antilles is…'. Distinguish from 'the West Indies', which is a wider term that also includes the Bahamas.

Common Mistakes

I visited Antilles last summer.
I visited the Antilles last summer.
this name always takes 'the'.
The Antilles is a beautiful region.
The Antilles are a beautiful region.
the name refers to many islands and takes a plural verb.

Word family

  • Antillean
    adjective

Synonym discussion

Sense: geographical name/1

These three names overlap but are not interchangeable. 'The Antilles' is the narrowest: it covers the long arc of islands from Cuba down to Trinidad, split into the Greater Antilles (the four big islands) and the Lesser Antilles (the smaller eastern chain), but it leaves out the Bahamas. 'The West Indies' is wider — it adds the Bahamas and is the traditional English label for the whole island group, often used in cricket and historical writing. 'The Caribbean' is wider still, naming the sea itself and, by extension, all the islands plus parts of the surrounding mainland coast. So a tourist might say, 'We sailed through the Antilles,' a cricket fan might cheer, 'Go West Indies!', and a travel writer might write, 'Food across the Caribbean shares African and Spanish roots.'

the Antillesthe West Indiesthe Caribbean

Etymology

Medieval LatinPortugueseSpanishFrenchEnglish

The name comes from 'Antilia', a legendary island that medieval European map-makers placed in the unknown waters of the Atlantic Ocean. When Spanish explorers reached the Caribbean in the late 1400s, they reused the old name for the real islands they had found. English picked up the plural form 'Antilles' from French and Spanish in the 1600s, and the labels 'Greater' and 'Lesser' were added later to separate the bigger northern islands from the smaller eastern ones.