The U.S. is a democracy, albeit a deficient one rather than a working one [1]. At least is the least deficient one amongst those.

[1] https://www.democracymatrix.com/ranking

No, that would be Uruguay.

And for context, the ranking says USA is the 36th most democratic country, which is pretty darn low if you ask me.

Darn; overlooked that one hiding in the middle of all these Working Democracies.

apparently by 2023 it got upgraded to working:

https://www.democracymatrix.com/online-analysis/matrix#/char...

after further looking it turns out that it was also categorized as working before 2020 and after 2020. the difference being 0.01 points. in 2020 it took a dive in rules settlement and implementation for which there is an obvious culprit: covid.

https://www.democracymatrix.com/online-analysis/country#/Uni...

Describing the US as a democracy is totally normal among actual experts in the study of governments (political scientists).

[citation requested]

I've seen representative democracy, and representative republic, but rarely purely one or the other.

Sounds like terminology slip, then. People use the term democracy to describe the US, often in contrast to authoritarian dictatorships; but that is more of a crude definition, a colloquialism rather than an accurate description of US governance.