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atoll.

A type of island consisting of a ribbon reef that nearly or entirely surrounds a lagoon and supports, in most cases, one to many islets on the reef platform.

5 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈætɒl/Received-Pronunciation/əˈtɒl/Received-Pronunciation/ˈætɔl/General-American/ˈætɑl/General-American
  1. A type of island consisting of a ribbon reef that nearly or entirely surrounds a lagoon and supports, in most cases, one to many islets on the reef platform.

Where this word comes from

Borrowed from Portuguese atol, from Dhivehi އަތޮޅު (atoḷu), possibly from Prakrit *𑀲𑀁𑀢𑀻𑀞 (*saṃtīṭha), from Sanskrit सम्- (sam-) + तीर्थ (tīrtha) “level ford”. The traditional etymology from Persian آبتل (âb-tal, “water-hillock”) is unlikely.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.