"State" refers to "any sovereign polity". The US is weird here in that it pretends it's internal political divisions are sovereigns and refers to them as states

"State" refers to "any sovereign polity". The US is weird here in that it pretends it's internal political divisions are sovereigns and refers to them as states, but that doesn't make every other country in the world not a state. Definition from wikitionary (but nothing is special about this choice of dictionary, you should find a similar definition in any dictionary): https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/state#Noun https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/state#Noun