Robb. Knight.

Firstly, I'd like to thank my right honorable friend for giving me an advanced copy of her post.

A few months ago, as we are wont to do, Zoe and I got into a heated discussion about if Portsmouth is an island or not. Then she went a bit overboard in this post correcting me about the density of Portmouth's population which is fair enough because I was misled by Wikipedia.

The second half of her post, however, is nothing short of lunacy, claiming Portsmouth isn't an island because you could get there using shank's pony:

If you can walk to it, it’s not an island

An outrageous claim. I'd like to paraphrase the great Haddaway and also start like a really crap best man's speech:

What is love an island? Merriam-Webster defines it as:

a tract of land surrounded by water and smaller than a continent

so does the Cambridge Dictionary:

a piece of land completely surrounded by water:

and Britannica, Collins English Dictionary, Dictionary.com, and National Geographic. And every other dictionary in the land including the Chambers School Dictionary I got given by my English teacher when I left school^[1]:

Even school children know what an island is. Portsmouth is, last time I checked, smaller than a continent. It's also surrounded by water.

There is no definition I could find that has a caveat of "If you can walk to it, it's not an island". The tidal island list Zoe mentioned in her post is lacking a vital entry: Portsmouth.

While writing this, I did came across some anti-island propaganda from none other than the biggest tech company in the world. Apple Maps does not show Portsmouth as an island. Shenanigans! I shall be emailing Tim Apple post haste^[2].

Anyway, you don't get to argue with the dictionary, Zoe. Words mean things. Island means surrounded by water. Like Portsmouth.