North America

American  

noun

1. the northern continent of the Western Hemisphere, extending from Central America to the Arctic Ocean. Highest point, Denali, 20,300 feet (6,187 meters); lowest, Death Valley, 276 feet (84 meters) below sea level. About 9,360,000 square miles (24,242,400 square kilometers).

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North America British  

noun

1. the third largest continent, linked with South America by the Isthmus of Panama and bordering on the Arctic Ocean, the N Pacific, the N Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean. It consists generally of a great mountain system (the Western Cordillera) extending along the entire W coast, actively volcanic in the extreme north and south, with the Great Plains to the east and the Appalachians still further east, separated from the Canadian Shield by an arc of large lakes (Great Bear, Great Slave, Winnipeg, Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, Ontario); reaches its greatest height of 6194 m (20 320 ft) in Mount McKinley, Alaska, and its lowest point of 85 m (280 ft) below sea level in Death Valley, California, and ranges from snowfields, tundra, and taiga in the north to deserts in the southwest and tropical forests in the extreme south. Pop: 332 156 000 (2005 est). Area: over 24 000 000 sq km (9 500 000 sq miles)

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North America Cultural  

1. Third-largest continent (after Asia and Africa), comprising Canada, the United States, Mexico, and Central America.

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Other Word Forms

• North American
  adjective

Etymology

Origin of North America

First recorded in 1680–90

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

North America

US President Donald Trump has presented Chinese President Xi Jinping with a sculpture of a bald eagle, a bird native to North America and his country's national symbol, during a lavish state dinner in Washington.

From BBC ● Sep. 25, 2026

El Adli said the fossils likely belonged to an animal from one of two extinct mammal families that roamed North America during the Uintan North American Land Mammal Age.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 24, 2026

Lamb, the Xcel executive, says the conditions that can create large wildfires are worsening and moving east, and all utilities in North America should prepare.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 22, 2026

Notably, central North America remains far cooler than before the eruption.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 22, 2026

Thanks to Global Positioning Systems we can see that Europe and North America are parting at about the speed a fingernail grows–roughly two yards in a human lifetime.

From "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson