Word.ws English Dictionary

islandward

islandward adjective: being in or facing towards an island.

Adjective

islandward (not comparable)

  1. (uncommon) Being in or facing towards an island.
    • In this case the unweathered appearance of the rock is explained by its protection beneath the cay sands. Alternatively, the islandward dip may result from some at present unexplained anomaly, and may have formed recently along the present seaward shore.1962 February 28, Marie-Hélène Sachet, “Geography and land ecology of Clipperton Island”, in Atoll Research Bulletin, number 86, page 97
    • The profile clearly indicates that the oceanic basement continues to slope below the islandward slope of the trench with an average slope which increases from about 5 to 10°. The overlying islandward "wall" of the trench is made of an imbricated thrust mass of deformed sediments.1973, Xavier Le Pichon, Jean Francheteau, Jean Bonnin, “Processes at consuming plate boundaries” (chapter 7), in Developments In Geotectonics 6: Plate Tectonics, Elsevier Scientific Publishing...

Adverb

islandward (not comparable)

  1. In the direction of an island, toward an island.
    • Once, indeed, a submarine cable was laid from Cape Cod to Nantucket ; but the stupid skipper of a coasting vessel fished it to the surface with his anchor, and, vexed at the little trouble it had caused him, severed it with his axe, and the magnetic current flowed no more islandward.1868 September, “Nantucket”, in Lippincott's Magazine of Literature, Science and Education, volume 2, page 286
    • Soon after, however, we met a canoe, with a young fellow at the paddle, bowling islandward and homeward with a fair wind.1873 October 2, Charles Alfred Pillsbury, “Down the Potomac”, in Forest and Stream, volume I, number 8, page 113

Examples of islandward in a sentence

  • In each case, the sense of motion is such that the eastern or oceanic side is thrust beneath the western or islandward side of the shallow seismic zone.2012, Henry R. Frankel, The Continental Drift Controversy: Evolution Into Plate Tectonics, volume IV, Cambridge University Press, page 543:
  • When on the East the sheer bright star arose / that tells of coming Dawn, the ship made landfall / and came up islandward in the dim of night.1974, Homer, “The Return”, in Robert Fitzgerald, transl., edited by Wilfred Thomas Jewkes, Man the Voyager, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, page...

Origin of islandward

From island + -ward.

Questions about islandward

What does islandward mean?
Islandward means being in or facing towards an island.
How do you use islandward in a sentence?
In each case, the sense of motion is such that the eastern or oceanic side is thrust beneath the western or islandward side of the shallow seismic zone.
What part of speech is islandward?
Islandward can be an adjective or an adverb.

Words near islandward in the dictionary

  1. islands of stability
  2. Islands of the Blessed
  3. Islands of the Blest
  4. Islands of the North Atlantic
  5. Islandside
  6. islandward
  7. islandwards
  8. islandwide
  9. islandwoman
  10. islandwomen
  11. islandy

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: islandward (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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