It typically refers to the predominantly European-descent nations and ethnic groups in the Americas that speak English as a native language, making up the majority of people in the world who speak English as a first language.

While it is primarily used to refer to people of English ancestry, it (along with terms like Anglo, Anglic, Anglophone, and Anglophonic) is also used to denote all people of British or Northwestern European ancestry.

[3] It can include all people of Northwestern European ethnic origin who speak English as a mother tongue and their descendants in the New World.

In this context the term may refer to an English American, a person from the United States whose ancestry originates wholly or partly in England, a person from the United States who speaks English as their first language (see American English), a collective term referring to those countries that have similar legal systems based on common law, relations between the United Kingdom and United States, or Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, a national cataloging code.

In this context, the term can mean a person from the Americas whose ancestry originates from any English speaking country (see British diaspora) or a person from the Americas who has an English name and speaks English as their first language (see English-speaking world and Languages of the Americas), or a person from Anglo-America.