[bee_rider]

Asking people in the US seems like a sort of skewed sample; surely everyone in the Americas at least should get a vote on whether or not they want to distinguish more clearly between the continents and this one large country some of us happen to live in.

I do agree though that it is not so ambiguous really in the case of America, the Americas, North America, and South America—because there isn’t a singular “America” continent to refer to (unless we want to dip into the nightmare that is counting and naming the continents; Europe is a subcontinent, I’ll happily die on that hill). But “American” seems a little ambiguous, what else should we call somebody from the Americas, if we want to refer to them in that context? Nobody would say “An Americasian.”

[mthoms]

We Canadians use “America” and “The States” interchangeably to describe the United States and we’re not the least bit bothered by it.

If we want to refer to the continent we’ll just say North America.

[devilbunny]

This is one of those places where in some languages - Spanish, of course, and I would assume Portuguese - "americano" (or equivalent) basically means "Western Hemisphere". But in others, like English, "America" means the United States of America, just like "Mexico" means the United Mexican States. If you're using English, "North American", "Central American", and "South American" cover most of the situations you're talking about. "American" without further qualification in English means the USA. And it is justifiable: there is exactly one country on the planet with "America" in its name.