Saint Kitts and Nevis
- proper noun
- /seɪnt kɪts ənd ˈniːvɪs/
:
San Cristóbal y Nieves
- I visited Saint Kitts and Nevis last summer.
Examples
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Exports from Saint Kitts and Nevis mainly include sugar and tourism services.
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My friends traveled to Saint Kitts and Nevis for their honeymoon last year.
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Citizens of Saint Kitts and Nevis celebrate their independence each September.
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Have you ever been to Saint Kitts and Nevis?
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Citizens of Saint Kitts and Nevis celebrate their independence each September.
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Exports from Saint Kitts and Nevis mainly include sugar and tourism services.
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My friends traveled to Saint Kitts and Nevis for their honeymoon last year.
Synonyms
A small country of two islands in the Caribbean Sea
A small country in the Caribbean made of two main islands, Saint Kitts and Nevis
A country in the Caribbean made of the islands Saint Kitts and Nevis
A small Caribbean country made of two islands, Saint Kitts and Nevis
Surface Forms
Morphology
This is a fixed proper name for a country made from two place names joined by 'and'; knowing 'Saint', 'and' and that 'Nevis' is an island may suggest a geographic referent composed of two places, but it does not let a learner reliably infer the full meaning 'a sovereign country consisting of two islands' without prior knowledge. Proper names are partly compositional (two named places) yet require world-knowledge to recover the political/geographic status, so the expression is only partially transparent to B1 learners.
Etymology
Saint Kitts and Nevis may come from the names of the two islands: Saint Kitts is a short form of 'Saint Christopher', a saint who protects travelers, and Nevis comes from the Spanish word 'nieves' meaning 'snow', because the island's tall mountain often wears white clouds like snow. So the name points to two islands — one named for a saint and the other for 'snow' — which helps you remember it is a country of two islands.
