America


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Also called the Americas. North and , considered together.
Contemporary Examples

Just a week ago, Obama took center stage at the U.N. General Assembly and did nothing closely resembling “rooting” for America.
Obama’s Strange Trip Nicolle Wallace September 29, 2009

An honorable Congress knows in its bones that the full faith of the United States of America is at stake.
Never Mind Obamacare. Worry About the Debt Ceiling. William L. McComb September 30, 2013

Ambrose was one of America’s most cherished popular historians.
David’s Bookclub: Eisenhower in War and Peace David Frum December 22, 2012

That runs so counter to what many women are told in corporate America, which is to not show weakness.
Ping Fu’s Journey from Cultural Revolution Orphan to Geomagic CEO Katie Baker January 19, 2013

Despite all the angst, the Russians were not ready to give up their summer in America.
How a Blogger Blocked Sex Slavery Abigail Pesta March 21, 2011

Historical Examples

Next, he organized a church with four other men who had come from America.
The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 Various

America is the most governed and legislated country in the world!
‘Tis Sixty Years Since Charles Francis Adams

What, then, is America’s duty to the oppressed race or the small nation?
Freedom, Truth and Beauty Edward Doyle

My field of observation has been at home, here in America; but it has been the same in France.
‘Tis Sixty Years Since Charles Francis Adams

America is a nation of inventors—the leaders in this mechanical age.
Radio Boys Loyalty Wayne Whipple

noun
short for the United States of America
Also called the Americas. the American continent, including North, South, and Central America

1507, in Cartographer Martin Waldseemüller’s treatise “Cosmographiae Introductio,” from Modern Latin Americanus, after Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512) who made two trips to the New World as a navigator and claimed to have discovered it. His published works put forward the idea that it was a new continent, and he was first to call it Novus Mundus “New World.” Amerigo is more easily Latinized than Vespucci.

The name Amerigo is Germanic, said to derive from Gothic Amalrich, literally “work-ruler.” The Old English form of the name has come down as surnames Emmerich, Emery, etc. The Italian fem. form merged into Amelia.

Colloquial pronunciation “Ameri-kay,” not uncommon 19c., goes back to at least 1643 and a poem that rhymed the word with away. Amerika “U.S. society viewed as racist, fascist, oppressive, etc.” first attested 1969; the spelling is German, but may also suggest the KKK.

It is interesting to remember that the song which is essentially Southern — “Dixie” — and that which is essentially Northern — “Yankee Doodle” — never really had any serious words to them. [“The Bookman,” June 1910]

FREDONIA, FREDONIAN, FREDE, FREDISH, &c. &c.
These extraordinary words, which have been deservedly ridiculed here as well as in England, were proposed sometime ago, and countenanced by two or three individuals, as names for the territory and people of the United States. The general term American is now commonly understood (at least in all places where the English language is spoken,) to mean an inhabitant of the United States; and is so employed, except where unusual precision of language is required. [Pickering, 1816]

An American patriotic hymn from the nineteenth century, sung to the tune of the national anthem of Great Britain, “God Save the Queen.” It begins, “My country, ’tis of thee.”

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