Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • The largest island of Japan, in the central part of the country between the Sea of Japan and the Pacific Ocean.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • proper noun the main island of Japan. Together with the islands of Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku it forms the bulk of the land area of Japan.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • proper noun The main island of the Japanese Archipelago.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the central and largest of the four main islands of Japan; between the Sea of Japan and the Pacific Ocean; regarded as the Japanese mainland

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Japanese 本州 (honshū, "main island").

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Examples

  • Television footage showed mangled Ferraris - many of them racing red - and debris spread over some 400 metres of the eastbound side of the Chugoku Expressway, the main trunk road in southern Honshu. travelling in convoy on Sunday morning on a stretch of wet highway when the leading Ferrari slid into a guardrail, police said.

    Telegraph.co.uk - Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph Telegraph Staff 2011

  • The world’s smallest variety of wolf, the Japanese wolf, also called the Honshu Wolf (Canis lupus hodophilax), supposedly became extinct in 1905 in Nara prefecture.

    Boing Boing 2007

  • And in the high-tech city of Sendai, on the island of Honshu, a young engineer is exploring salaried posts available in Europe.

    The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010

  • And in the high-tech city of Sendai, on the island of Honshu, a young engineer is exploring salaried posts available in Europe.

    The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010

  • When it comes to soba slippery, often cold, buckwheat noodles almost every prefecture in northern Honshu claims to be its authoritative home.

    Japanese food: use your noodle 2012

  • We were then transported by train to the village of Narumi on the main island of Honshu.

    Ralph Levenberg: Congress Is Missing in Action for the POWs/MIAs Ralph Levenberg 2011

  • The tunnel will be longer than the Seikan tunnel, which links the Japanese islands of Hokkaido and Honshu, and is the third tunnel to be bored through the Gotthard alpine range following the original rail tunnel, finished in 1880, and the 17-kilometer-long road tunnel completed 100 years later.

    Tunnel Meeting Marks Breakthrough for Transalpine Rail Transit Neil MacLucas 2010

  • TOKYO (Reuters) - An earthquake of magnitude 6.6 hit Japan on Saturday 126 km (80 miles) east-southeast of Hachinohe, off the east coast of Honshu island, the USGS reported.

    Magnitude 6.6 earthquake hits Japan: USGS Reuters 2011

  • It is longer than the Seikan tunnel, which links the Japanese islands of Hokkaido and Honshu.

    Swiss Finish World 2010

  • The 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit and Amphibious Squadron 11 arrived this morning off the west coast of Honshu, the MEU reports.

    4,000 Marines, sailors arrive in Japan to aid quake relief 2011

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