mainland

noun

1. The continent; the principal land, as distinguished from islands or a peninsula.

   “[…]I got to the mainland, where, to my great comfort, I clambered up the cliffs of the shore and sat me down upon the grass, free from danger and quite out of the reach of the water.”

   “You may have not realised when I was using the term mainland Europe, I was excluding the British Isles.”

   “Other examples of nonhuman self-domestication in the wild exist—for instance, the Zanzibar red colobus monkey diverged from the mainland African red colobus in similar ways during its island isolation—but bonobos are the closest and most relevant to us.”

2. The principal island of a group.
3. (Northern-Ireland)Great Britain.

   “All of the people I interviewed were from Protestant backgrounds, with proud British traditions. Yet when they set foot on the mainland, they were met at times with jeering, derision and othering from the very people with whom they were raised to believe they had the most in common.”

name

1. The largest island in the Orkney Islands council area, to the north of Scotland.
2. The largest island in the Shetland Islands council area, to the north of both Orkney and Scotland.
3. (historical)A historical region of British Columbia, British North America, British Empire.