Also see Can I use “US-American” to disambiguate “American”? If not, what can I use? and Is ‘USAers’ just an ordinary English word today? As a broad rule, United States of America is essentially never used attributively— you are a U.S. citizen, a United States citizen, or an American citizen.
28 There is a suffix that is written only as -ize in American English and often -ise in British English (but not always, as ShreevatsaR points out in the comments). This suffix attaches to a large number of words, thus the s/z alternation shows up in a large number of words. Citizen does not have the -ize/-ise suffix.
Sure, American can refer to a citizen of the United States, but we could also talk about the Americas, or the American continent. (This is not unlike how man can refer to the male gender, or to humankind).
MSN: This Epic, Oscar-Nominated Anthony Hopkins Political Drama Roger Ebert Compared to 'Citizen Kane' Is Finally Streaming on Prime Video
This Epic, Oscar-Nominated Anthony Hopkins Political Drama Roger Ebert Compared to 'Citizen Kane' Is Finally Streaming on Prime Video
A citizen of the United States is a legal resident who has been processed by the government as being a member of the United States. A denizen of the United States is simply someone that lives there.
Why is citizen used to describe an inhabitant of a country when the word is derived from the Latin for city (civitas) and originally meant a city dweller? Wouldn’t the nouns derived from ‘country...
etymology - Why is the inhabitant of a country called a “citizen ...