Police polishing off the daily donuts, disproportionately high civil lawsuits, muscle cars and hummers bathing in oil and Donald Trump building a missile out of $100 notes to fire straight into Rosie O'Donnel's all-to-commonly representative figure of the US of A, about to burst under long-amassed greed and ignorance.
Yes, in a nutshell, that is what comes to mind.
Sorry to call you out personally on this one, but doesn't your father have a
Lamborghini...How can you even bring up such ridiculously overwrought stereotypes into this thread?
America was named after an Italian, Amerigo Vespucci.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerigo_Vespucci
We the people of the United States tend to use the term
America to refer to our nation, but mostly to the extent of America as an
ideal; the freedoms, rights, feelings thereof tend to represent "America". The term "United States" more aptly refers to the solid and dotted lines delineating the physical borders of our nation (which are ironically bordered only for statistical and political purposes).
The United States of America is a brand name for our really important documents, like laws and currency. And on some large buildings that are part of the District of Colombia; just in case you accidentally think you're actually
in Colombia (well, Ronald Regan International Airport is not far away if you stepped on the wrong flight).
Like most people around the world, we feel then need to subdivide ourselves to into smaller units, many by names of the states; although this is a tricky issue, since some of us were born in (or lived a long time in) other states, and some state names do not shorten well. For there, there are regional areas of most states, to further subdivide: I put South Florida in my location field, because I live in an area of Florida that is neither agricultural, rural, the property of Mickey Mouse, nor Everglades.
I don't expect everyone to know exactly where that is; if you care to look it up, you can. If you don't care, then fine. There's a number of absurd other shorthand terms for this area, like 954, SoFla, SF, and so on and so forth (probably even a FIPS code), but the point of communication is not to befuddle and confuse, but to be clear and understandable.
There are continents called North America or South America, sometimes referred to as "the Americas"; Central America is a large region between Mexico and Colombia; "Latin America" generally refers to everything aft of Panama.
I agree. That makes an awful lot of sense.
