And no, "America" may have referred to the US when I was a kid and here in Central Europe we had Back to the Future type of shoes with the American flag, yeah, and I would not say unambiguously so.
If someone says "America" to refer to a place, they really ought to specify if they want you to understand them.
"America" is short for "The United States of America" in English. That's its definition. I don't understand how people have difficulty with this concept.
So America is unassigned, hence why we assigned it to the USA colloquially.
[1] "If someone says "America" to refer to a place, they really ought to specify if they want you to understand them.".
Additionally, natural languages are inherently ambiguous.
So ugh, I do not think we disagree.
Maybe that doesn't apply to what you're replying to here. But my gut is that anything nested deeper than level 2 on HN is one or more respondents doing low-effort, pedantic heel-digging. (Single exception for any and all of Alan Kay's posts where the references cited are always worth whatever level the nesting is at.)
> The Americas, sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North America and South America. When viewed as a single continent, the Americas are the 2nd largest continent by area after Asia, and is the 3rd largest continent by population. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth's Western Hemisphere and constitute the New World.
Yeah, OK, not sure "America" refers to The Oh-So-Great United of America according to this. Guess what? You can find 10 in each direction. Specify. If you disagree with "one should specify", why down-vote? Baffling, baffling indeed.
It’s a silly side discussion in which nothing new is being said. Complaining that America generally refers to the country is a hobby for some folks, and that’s fine, but it’s only entertaining for them.
If someone needs the America you’re talking about specified, i.e. they can’t figure it out from context, the discussion is sort of moot. (Same way one can use the word Europe despite it being incredibly ambiguous. Overspecificity comes at the cost of conciseness.)
And this is why we have (programming) language wars. Ada or Forth?! :P
There's North and South America. These, together, are the Americas.
America is not that typically. Which makes sense, America is singular. But the Americas are two. So which one are we referring to?
Because if we say both, then the correct term is Americas. If we say just one, then it's North America or South America.