There is no official (or for that matter scientific) definition of when land surrounded on all sides by water is "island" and when it's "continent". More on this on this video - and on one application earlier than the one described in video, in the below comment:
Why is Greenland an Island and Australia a Continent?
Today I Found Out | 18.III.2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOWjsUVBXFo
2:21 It so happens, I read a geography book in which the continents or world parts are:
- 1) Asia
- 2) Africa
- 3) Europe
- 4) America (this was before Panama canal)
- 5) Oceania or Australia.
In the latter you find British colonies like Queensland or New Zealand.
The list of islands by size goes:
- 1) Ulimaroa
- 2) Greenland
- 3) Madagascar ... etc.
As you may have guessed, Queensland is on the island Ulimaroa within the continent Australia, van Diemen's land and Wellington are also within the continent Australia, but outside the island of Ulimaroa.
When this geography book was written:
- Swedish spelling was still the one found on one item in Helsinki's Hufvudstadsbladet (the title);
- Texas was an independent country
- Ashantis were independent, and according to reports believed by the editors or author engaged in both slave hunt and human sacrifice in Benin and Dahomey
- and Ulimaroa and van Diemen's land were not yet together forming the Commonwealth of Australia.
Now, if one considered Europe, Asia and Africa instead as one continent, obviously the largest islands back then would have been:
- 1) America
- 2) Ulimaroa
- 3) Greenland
- 4) Madagascar
and now
- 1 & 2) N and S America
- 3) Ulimaroa
- 4) Greenland
- 5) Madagascar.
If you take this view, the non-island continent actually does have four corners. NW to SW, clockwise:
- British Isles
- Sakhalin
- Singapore
- Cape of Good Hope.
And one could argue that Biblical term eretz means "continent". The continent has four corners, and if you step off them, you need to be able to swim ...
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