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Glite Dictionary
Greater Antilles

Greater Antilles

4.2
A group of large islands in the western West Indies, including Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola and Puerto Rico
  • proper noun
translation icon : Antillas Mayores
  • The Greater Antilles includes the islands of Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico.
  • islands of the Greater Antilles

Examples

  • Visitors to any of the islands of the Greater Antilles (Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica, Puerto Rico; figure 2) can see a variety of different anole species.

    Academic text (2007)

  • All that day, a tropical storm had swept across the Greater Antilles and into the Central American coastline.

    Fiction book (1996)

  • Map of the Greater Antilles.

    Academic text (2007)

  • Since the ancestors of the Taino had moved onto the islands of the western Greater Antilles, the chiefdoms had been growing larger and more powerful.

    Academic text (1990)

  • Habitat specialists have evolved independently on each of the islands of the Greater Antilles (Figure 5).

    Academic text (2007)

  • The same forces that combined to bring Guarionex's rule to an end in La Vega Real were acting on all the other chiefdoms on Hispaniola and, ultimately, on others throughout the Greater Antilles.

    Academic text (1990)

  • In addition to intermarriage between high-ranking lineages, the large chiefdoms of Hispaniola and the other Greater Antilles interacted with one another through a ball game.

    Academic text (1990)

  • After visiting the Greater Antilles, she fell in love with the Caribbean culture.

  • Many tourists travel to the Greater Antilles for their beautiful beaches and rich history.

Surface Forms

Greater Antilles main

Morphology

greater + Antilles

The phrase names a subset of the Antilles where 'greater' simply marks the larger/more important islands, so the meaning (‘the larger islands of the Antilles’) is directly built from the constituents. This is a transparent, classificatory construction common across languages, so a B1 learner who knows both words would readily infer the intended referent.

Etymology

Greater Antilles comes from when sailors and mapmakers called the big islands of the Antilles 'greater' and the small ones 'lesser'. That's why Greater Antilles now means the group of large islands like Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola and Puerto Rico.