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Comment by amcvitty | Hacker News Reader

That’s true in America, but the word government is applied more narrowly elsewhere, including in the UK.

What matters is what the OP was communicating with it, and in English it means all state bodies responsible for administration. No one would argue the US Supreme Court is not part of the government.

No. That's what it means in the USA. Judges are not part of the government in the UK, Ireland, Australia, or New Zealand either. They're part of the State.

You and others are confusing definition for meaning. An HN rule asks people to engage with the best interpretation of someones argument, in which case it's very clear what the OP was communicating by using "government" where you might use "state", and it's clear from responses that folks clearly know that but have decided to argue over pointless semantics that engage with the posters meaning. Not a single comment tried to engage with the comment with good intentions, so focused on "I gotcha!" vibes over unproductive pedantry. How pointless and petty.

Nah. There was some genuine confusion. And then there were some Americans incorrectly asserting that their usage was an English language thing.

I think I might be mainly responsible for the confusion, but not on purpose or with ill-intent, but literally "this word means differently for us here, who live in the country we're discussing", and I tried to make it easier to understand, but I think I made it worse.

Nothing here been a "gotcha" but basically Spanish-speaking people using English to communicate Spanish concepts to Americans who also speak English but have different understanding of those concepts. Nothing malicious here, just some good old misunderstandings :)

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