If countries are also called "states", is America a state of states?

I suppose it could. Each state operates independently of each other, but are bound to the federal laws much like the member states in the EU.

Hell, that’s probably why they named it that then. “We have a bunch of mini states, but we can combine to create a superstate composed of these mini states in times of need—JUST LIKE VOLTRON!”

Yes, ‘state’ can mean a country or a state such as California, which I guess means the United States could be called a state of states.

One definition of a state is “a politically organised body of people under a single government” – both California and the United States have their own government, even though they are both geographically overlapping

As a side note, despite German having a perfectly good word for “state” (“Bundesstaat”), the states of Germany are instead called “Länder” which is also is the same word for “countries” (states of other countries are still called Bundesstaaten though)

America is a pair of continents (North America (including Central America) and South America).

The United States of America is a union and a federation of states.

So if we were to compare the USA to Europe each state would be a country and the US government would be equivelant to the European Council?

If you want to stretch it for the sake of some general analogy, yes, except for all of the many details. For example, the USA was much more tightly bound than the EU is now, even before the the American Civil War, and since then, the US Federal Government has dominated what used to be a balance between it and the separate states. Another example is how not all the states of Europe are part of the EU, the states of Europe would all still be called nations while the states in the USA never were, etc.

@TennisStar – I suppose you could compare the states of the USA to the countries of the European Union but isn’t actually the case. (By the way, not all European countries are in the EU, just like how not all American countries are in the USA.) The EU members are still quite independent and at a global scale are still seperate entities – it is a union of nations, that’s why it’s called a supranational organisation.

There are though proposals to create a single European federation by a few people, but this is still far off from happening.