America
Pronunciation
- IPA: /əˈmɛɹɪkə/
- Rhymes: -ɛɹɪkə
Origin
From a Latinized form of the forename of Amerigo Vespucci (1454–1512).
Full definition of America
Proper noun
America
(plural Americas)- The continents of North and South America, especially when considered to form a single continent.
- 2009, Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity, Penguin 2010, p. 691:Franciscan attitudes in the Canaries offered possible precedents for what Europe now came to call ‘the New World’, or, through a somewhat tangled chain of circumstances, ‘America’.
- The United States of America.
- 2013-05-25, No hiding place, In America alone, people spent $170 billion on “direct marketingâ€â€”junk mail of both the physical and electronic varieties—last year. Yet of those who received unsolicited adverts through the post, only 3% bought anything as a result.
- (often with a possessive pronoun) An idealized destination or object of one's ambition.
- 1922, James Joyce, Ulysses, II.402:Thou sawest thy America, thy lifetask, and didst charge to cover like the transpontine bison.
Usage notes
Residents of the United States of America may refer to their country as the "United States" (more formal), "America" (common and often patriotic), "the U.S.A.", or simply "the States" (informal). Residents of Alaska, United States of America's northernmost state, refer to mainland America as "the lower 48" (informal).
Residents of the United Kingdom typically refer to the United States of America as "America". Residents of Canada less frequently refer to the United States of America as "America", referring otherwise to "the United States" (more formal), "the U.S." (common), or simply "the States" (informal). Peoples from Latin American countries usually refer to "America" as the whole continent, rarely using the term "Americas" mostly used in the United States.
The plural form "the Americas" is common when referring to North and South America together, to avoid ambiguity. Seen as a single continent, it is commonly "the continent of America".