An ait is characteristically long and narrow, and may become a permanent island should it become secured and protected by growing vegetation.
[4][1] Although not common in 21st-century English, "ait" or "eyot" appears in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Charles Dickens's Bleak House,[4] and Thackeray's Vanity Fair.
River whirling along so fast that its skin was pulled into wrinkles like silk dragged over the floor.
[citation needed] More recently, "eyot" was used by Terry Pratchett in the first of the Discworld books, The Colour of Magic.
[citation needed] In 1995, William Horwood (novelist) used it in Toad Triumphant, written in the style of and one of his sequels to the 1908 novel The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame.