The meaning of the word American in the English language varies, according to the historical, geographical, and political context in which it is used. It is derived from America, a term originally denoting all of the New World (also called "the Americas"). In some expressions it retains this pan-American sense, but its usage has evolved over time and, for various historical reasons, the word came to denote people or things specifically from the United States of America.

In modern English, "American" generally refers to the United States, and among native speakers of English this usage is almost universal, with any other use of the term requiring specification of the subject under discussion. However, this ambiguity has been the source of controversy, particularly among Latin Americans, who feel that using the term solely for the United States misappropriates it.

The word can be used as both a noun and an adjective. In adjectival use, it is generally understood to mean "of or relating to the United States"; for example, "Elvis Presley was an American singer" or "the American President gave a speech today." In noun form, it generally means U.S. citizen or national (see Names for U.S. citizens). The noun is rarely used in American English to refer to people not connected to the United States. When used with a grammatical qualifier, the adjective American can mean "of or relating to the Americas," as in Latin American or Indigenous American. Less frequently, the adjective can take this meaning without a qualifier, as in "American Spanish dialects and pronunciation differ by country", or the name of the Organization of American States. A third use of the term pertains specifically to the indigenous peoples of the Americas, for instance, "In the 16th century, many Americans died from imported diseases during the European conquest".

American(s) may refer to:

In language, a word is the smallest element that may be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content (with literal or practical meaning). This contrasts with a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning but will not necessarily stand on its own. A word may consist of a single morpheme (for example: oh!, rock, red, quick, run, expect), or several (rocks, redness, quickly, running, unexpected), whereas a morpheme may not be able to stand on its own as a word (in the words just mentioned, these are -s, -ness, -ly, -ing, un-, -ed).

A complex word will typically include a root and one or more affixes (rock-s, red-ness, quick-ly, run-ning, un-expect-ed), or more than one root in a compound (black-board, rat-race). Words can be put together to build larger elements of language, such as phrases (a red rock), clauses (I threw a rock), and sentences (He threw a rock too but he missed).

The term word may refer to a spoken word or to a written word, or sometimes to the abstract concept behind either. Spoken words are made up of units of sound called phonemes, and written words of symbols called graphemes, such as the letters of the English alphabet.

An Italian American (Italian: Italoamericano singular, Italian: Italoamericani plural), is an American of Italian ancestry. The designation may also refer to someone possessing Italian and American dual citizenship. Italian Americans are the fourth largest European ethnic group in the United States (not including American ethnicity, an ethnonym used by many in the United States; overall, Italian Americans rank seventh, behind German, Irish, African American, English, American and Mexican).

About 5.5 million Italians immigrated to the U.S. from 1820 to 2004. The greatest surge of immigration, which occurred in the period between 1880 and 1920, alone brought more than 4 million Italians to America. About 80% of the Italian immigrants came from Southern Italy, especially from Sicily, Campania, Abruzzo and Calabria. This was a largely agricultural and overpopulated region, where much of the populace had been impoverished by centuries of foreign misrule, and the economic measures imposed on the South after Italian unification in 1861 . After unification the Italian government initially encouraged emigration of landless peasants to relieve economic pressures in the South. In the U.S., most Italians began their new lives as unskilled, manual workers in Eastern cities, mining camps and in agriculture. Italian Americans gradually moved from the lower rungs of the economic scale in 1890-1910 to a level comparable to the national average by 1970. By 1990, more than 65% of Italian Americans were managerial, professional, or white-collar workers. The Italian-American communities have often been characterized by strong ties with family, the Catholic Church, fraternal organizations and political parties. Today, over 17.8 million Americans claim Italian ancestry.