Islands - The biggest?

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Rosaudio

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Howzit fellas, apologies if this is the wrong section, please move it mods if it is

A couple of years ago I went to Australia ad the locals there bragged about how it was the biggest island on earth. Of course I believed them until a few days ago when I googled it and got results saying that actually Greenland is the biggest.

The reason Australia isn't the biggest is because it is a continent which I find completely untrue. Australia isn't a continent, Australasia is (or is it Oceania?). Anyway after thinking that Australia is in fact the true biggest island, I stumbled across a word called Antarctica.

Now Antarctica is an island correct? It is much bigger than Australia so why isn't it classified as the biggest island. Of course I found statements on the interwebz saying that it was a continent and therefore not an island. How does being a continent take away the classification of island?

So it's all very confusing to me, which area is the biggest island on earth in your opinion?
 
Greenland is the biggest if I recall correctly.

Antarctica is one of the 7 continents, which include:
North America
South America
Antarctica
Africa
Europe
Asia
Australia
 
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You need to find proper definitions or at least define what the difference is between a continent and an island.
 
Wikipedia does:

An island (pronounced /ˈaɪlənd/) or isle (/ˈaɪl/) is any piece of sub-continental land that is surrounded by water... There is no standard of size which distinguishes islands from islets and continents.
Click to expand...

So, because Australia and Antarctica are continents, Greenland is, in fact, the world's largest island.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island

Australia is more than three times the size of Greenland, the largest island due to its size and isolation. However, Australia is sometimes considered 'The Island Continent', but not an island.[1] Antarctica is a special case: if its ice is considered not as land, but as water, it is not a single land mass, but a number of land areas of much smaller area, since the ice-bedrock boundary is below sea level in many regions of the continent. However, if its ice cover were to be actually lifted, some rock that is currently below sea level because of the weight of the ice would rise above it.
Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_islands_by_area
 
Edit: Just researched everything on the interwebz and it appears I am horribly wrong about everything and I completely forgot about the difference between an island and continent

So Greenland is the biggest island then.. thanks all :)
 
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Wow...don't they teach geography in primary school anymore?
 
Manitoulin Island in Lake Huron is the largest island in any freshwater inland body of water in the world.

True story.
 
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