User blog comment:SpiritedDreaming/RWBY: Attack on Kevin Tower Defense Game/@comment-25936766-20160926200926/@comment-26397825-20160927231940

This is why I said colloquially, which means 'the most accepted deifnition of a word in a region' rather than 'the official definition of the word'. Worlwide, American colloquially means 'part of America (the United States)', not 'part of America (the landmass)'.

Technically everything in that land mass (which includes South America, all the way down to the opposite end of the continent) is American, just as every country in Europe is called European. But the countries are never referred to as American because in this day and age, the meaning of the word American has changed to mean specifically from the United States.