on an island
4
8.4
- idiom
- Informal
:
aislado
- It is as if they are alone on an island.
- alone on an island
For decades they lived on an island of despair, surrounded by welfare and no work.
- For decades they lived on an island of despair, surrounded by welfare and no work.
Examples
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They're devoted, but then they're stuck on an island.
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You got to believe you're the best because you are exposed on an island and everyone knows if you get beat.
Blog text (31) -
And so I really was on an island right by myself.
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It's really hard to be on an island fighting the world.
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For decades they lived on an island of despair, surrounded by welfare and no work.
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Oh, but she's-she's all alone on an island.
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What I haven't told him, what I am scared to tell him because I might regret it later, is that I'm afraid of spending three weeks alone with him on an island.
Fiction book (1994) -
My name is Hank Thompson, and I've been stranded out on an island in the Pacific all alone!
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Sometimes I feel like I'm on an island, completely alone in my thoughts.
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During the meeting, she expressed that she feels on an island, without support from her colleagues.
Antonyms
How Isolated
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly derivable from combining 'on' (location) + 'an' (article) + 'island' (a place set apart); a learner who knows these words can infer the metaphorical sense of being isolated. The spatial-to-social mapping (being physically separated on an island → feeling isolated) is cross-linguistically common and follows a straightforward compositional pattern.
Etymology
On an island comes from the simple picture of a person standing alone on a small island, surrounded by water and cut off from others, so no one is nearby to help. So, it means 'feeling isolated, alone, or unsupported'.