Definitions

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

  • An island of southern Italy in the Mediterranean Sea west of the southern end of the Italian peninsula. It was colonized from the eighth century BC by Greeks, who displaced the earlier Phoenician settlers. The next conquerors were Carthaginians, who in turn were conquered by Romans in the third century BC. After a succession of other rulers the island came under the control of the Normans in the 11th century AD and formed the nucleus of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, consisting of Sicily and southern Italy. The island continued to change hands until a later kingdom was conquered by Giuseppe Garibaldi in 1860 and became part of unified Italy.

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

  • proper noun An autonomous region and island of Italy.

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

  • noun the Italian region on the island of Sicily
  • noun the largest island in the Mediterranean

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Italian Sicilia, from Latin Sicilia, from Ancient Greek Σικελία (Sikelia), from Σίκελος Sikelos meaning Sicels.

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