A group of islands in the southern Atlantic Ocean east of the Strait of Magellan. Controlled by Great Britain since the 1830s, the islands are also claimed by Argentina and were occupied briefly by Argentinian troops in 1982 before being reoccupied by British forces.
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British crown colony consisting of a group of islands in the S Atlantic, east of the tip of South America: also claimed by Argentina: 4,710 sq mi (12,200 sq km)
proper name
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Overseas territory of the United Kingdom, located in the South Atlantic. Official name: Falkland Islands. Argentina contests the British sovereignty in the islands.
pronoun
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Origin of falkland-islands
Name taken from the Falkland Sound, which were named for Viscount Falkland by John Strong, who landed on the islands in 1690.
Sentence Examples
It appears to be common in the neighbourhood of Cape Town, while the recent Antarctic expeditions have shown that it occurs in various localities from the Falkland Islands to the Antarctic circle.
Bruce, the leader of the Scottish expedition, finds that there is a ridge " extending in a curve from Madagascar to Bouvet Island, and from Bouvet Island to the Sandwich group, whence there is a forked connexion through the South Orkneys to Graham's Land, and through South Georgia to the Falkland Islands and the South American continent."
- Excepting towards the north, where, in Mexico, it meets, and inosculates with the Nearctic subregion, the boundaries of the Neotropical region are simple enough to trace, comprehending as it does the whole of South America and all Central America; besides including the Falkland islands to the south-east and the Galapagos under the equator to the west, as well as the Antilles or West India islands up to the Florida channel.
The Falkland Islands consist entirely, so far as is known, of the older Palaeozoic rocks, Lower Devonian or Upper Silurian, slightly metamorphosed and a good deal crumpled and distorted, in the low grounds clay slate and soft sandstone, and on the ridges hardened sandstone passing into the conspicuous white quartzites.
The Falkland Islands form essentially a part of Patagonia, with which they are connected by an elevated submarine plateau, 1 See B Stechele, in'Milnchener geographische Studien, xx.(1906), and Geographical Journal (December 1907).