America

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See also: América, Amèrica, and americà

English[edit]

Wikipedia has articles on:

Wikipedia

Etymology[edit]

From a Latinized form of the Italian forename of Amerigo Vespucci (1454–1512). For more, see the Latin entry America and the Wikipedia article on the etymology of America.

Alternative forms[edit]

Pronunciation[edit]

Proper noun[edit]

America (plural Americas)

  1. The continents of North and South America, especially when considered to form a single continent; the Americas
    • 2009, Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity (Penguin 2010), page 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’.
  2. The United States of America.
    • 2013 May 25, “No hiding place”, The Economist, volume 407, number 8837, page 74: 
      In America alone, people spent $170 billion on “direct marketing”—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.

Usage notes[edit]

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 use "America" to mean the whole continent; they rarely use the term "Americas" which is 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".

Quotations[edit]

  • 1922, James Joyce, Ulysses, II.402:
    Thou sawest thy America, thy lifetask, and didst charge to cover like the transpontine bison.

Synonyms[edit]

See also[edit]

Translations[edit]

United States of America — see United States of America

Statistics[edit]

Italian[edit]

Italian Wikipedia has an article on:

Wikipedia it

Proper noun[edit]

America f

  1. (continent) the Americas

Derived terms[edit]

Anagrams[edit]

Latin[edit]

Etymology[edit]

Feminine form of Americus, the Latinized form of the forename of Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci (1454–1512).

First recorded in 1507 (together with the related term Amerigen) in the Cosmographiae Introductio, apparently written by Matthias Ringmann, in reference to South America;[1] first applied to both North and South America by Mercator in 1538. Amerigen means "land of Amerigo" and derives from Amerigo and gen, the accusative case of Greek gē "earth". America accorded with the feminine names of Asia, Africa, and Europa.[2]

Amerigo is the Italian form of a Germanic personal name. For more, see the Wikipedia article on the etymology of America.

Proper noun[edit]

America f (genitive Americae); first declension

  1. America.

Inflection[edit]

First declension with locative.

Number Singular
nominative America
genitive Americae
dative Americae
accusative Americam
ablative Americā
vocative America
locative Americae

References[edit]

  1. ^ John R. Hebert, "The Map That Named America: Library Acquires 1507 Waldseemüller Map of the World" ([1]), Information Bulletin, Library of Congress
  2. ^ Toby Lester, "Putting America on the Map", Smithsonian, 40:9 (December 2009)

Romanian[edit]

Etymology[edit]

Borrowed from Latin America.

Pronunciation[edit]

Proper noun[edit]

America f (plural Americi)

  1. America

Derived terms[edit]

Declension[edit]

singular plural
gender f indefinite definite indefinite definite
Nom/Acc
America Americi Americile
Gen/Dat
Americii
Americilor

Related terms[edit]

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