That’s what you’ll get a lot of places here, too.
That’s the image for those that think of it in conjunction with gallon jugs. Curiously, it also turns up in places that have overpriced imported beers on tap (I PAY, mind you, but they’re still overpriced). The image there seems to be that it’s something for people who don’t really like beer to drink. Often ordered by women.
In the way that ‘hard liquor’ is distinguished from…?
Well, I take your point, but in my dictionary, the first definition of “liquor” is “any liquid or juice”, with “alcoholic drink” being only the second definition. So, I would say that the expression “hard liquor” originated to distinguish booze from other drinks, and that my point about hard cider is only strengthened.
I’d guess that sweet cider may have something to do with Prohibition. That’s probably what killed cider in the US.
I can’t find a cite for that, but I did find this in my library:
From “Apples”, by Roger Yepsen:
One British visitor to the new United States remarked that apples were available eleven months of the year. And apples were consumed year-round as cider, America’s most popular drink among rich and poor, young and old.
But not necessarily from a non alcoholic “something”. Here, we have both sweet and hard cider, but both are alcoholic beverages. The only difference is that one is indeed sweeter (same thing that with “sweet” and “hard” champagne).
So, maybe it was the same in the US at these times and both sweet and hard cider were fermented.
So Laura Ingalls Wilder was “fairly recent”? Her father referred to her as a “half-pint of sweet cider” when she was a girl, and the term was probably around before that, yet.
Of course, this does not definitively establish that the “sweet cider” Charles Ingalls was referring to was non-alcoholic, but the term at least goes back some.
There is a persistent legend that (real) cider is improvedby the addition of protein. Recommendations include dropping in a bacon joint. This is supposed to completely disappear into the brew with only the bone remaining. Even more disturbingly is the hopefully apocryphal addition of rats.
Not in my neck of the woods.
Cider is the usual term, but sweet cider is also seen.
At no time does cider ever mean hard cider.
applejack
Cider has different meanings in the United Kingdom and the United States. Both meanings refer to a product containing the juice of apples.
It goes on to explain the differences between juice and sweet vs. hard cider and jacked cider too or apple brandy as the case may be. If you’re still not sure what to order at a bar just tell 'em you want a couple of shots of tequila. That won’t get you a coke or a bowl of cereal. 
Incidentally, my family comes from Appalacian Pennsylvania, and to us, sweet cider = nonalcoholic, hard cider = alcoholic, and apple jack = hard cider which has been made harder by freezing (the water freezes more easily than the alcohol, so you leave a bucket of hard cider out on the back porch in winter, and skim off the water ice). Without any adjectives, “cider” can be sweet or hard, depending on context, but usually means sweet (this may be due to the fact that there’s always a lot of young’uns running around in my family). If you went into a bar and ordered cider, you’d probably get something alcoholic, and if you ordered hard cider, you definitely would.
If you want a hard cider in a US bar, you order the brand name you want, just like with a beer. The most common hard cider around here seems to be Woodchuck, which should always be ordered in the Granny Smith varietal. Great, now I wanna start drinking at 8 in the morning.
Like Chronos, my dad’s family comes from the hills of western PA. My grandfather made cider in a handpress from eating varieties of apples. (At least I never heard that there were trees just for cider.) To me, cider is unpasteurized apple juice. Whether or not it has been filtered is irrelevant. Once it has sat around long enough, and some real bite to it and alcohol in it, it became hard cider. I really can’t drink apple juice, and most of what is sold in Colorado as “cider” is, disappointingly and invariably, apple juice.
My wife, who is Pennsylvania Dutch, and hence of German descent and should know better, discovered hard cider on a trip to England. She has pretty much given up beer. To her, cider and apple juice are confusingly similar, and hard cider is alcoholic apple cider. She is from central PA, which tells you just how regional this kind of thing is. (She grew up less than 200 miles from where my dad grew up. Well, measured as the crow flies and no roads go.)
To me (southern Ontario), apple juice is sweet and has no alcohol, and apple cider is fermented and has alcohol (even if just a trace for that sharp taste).
Applejacks were an unpopular apple-flavoured cereal from the 1970s. 
Nor in my neck of the woods, either.
“Hard cider” is a relatively recent term in these parts. In Massachusetts (since at least the 1960’s), “cider” has always referred to the brown cloudy liquid produced at local orchard farmstands, and it is hardly an abomination. No Thanksgiving dinner in my house is complete without it. The clear liquids found in supermarkets were, and will always be “juice”. I’ll grant that *they * are an abomination…
It was always a guilty pleasure to watch the cider presses in operation; they usually looked liked they were cobbled together from leftover farm equipment. The quality and taste of the cider would vary as the season progressed. Early cider (my favorite, which will be available in just a few weeks from now) tends to be tarter due the variety of apples available (usually early MacIntosh). By mid-October, the cider develops more depth, texture and sweetness. This is probably about the peak; if freshly picked apples are still being pressed toward the end of October, I have found that the cider can pick up a woody taste. Fairly typical for New England produce; nothing can touch it at it’s peak, but then it’s gone until next year. I would assume that the better ciders available after this time have either been preserved and stored, or are from apples kept in cold storage.
Speaking of preservatives: There has been a move locally to require farmstands to pasteurize or preserve ciders due to the threat of e.coli. While I applaud advances in the name of health, these days one never has the satisfaction of discovering a “forgotten” bottle of cider with a pesky cap that won’t stay on Those who are home brewers/vintners should be careful to look for non-pasteurized or non-preserved ciders when concocting and cellaring.
Best to all,
plynck
I think you’ll find that pasteurizing will make your beloved cider taste like juice. I’ve had filtered cider, that is filtered stuff squeezed from apples in a hand press, and it still tastes like what I call cider. I’ve never had pasteurized “cider” that tasted much different from apple juice. As near as I can tell, it is pasteurization that produces the abomination that is apple juice.
In Spanish, like in “out-of-the-US English”, Sidra means the fermented apple juice. If you call it zumo (juice) it is unfermented.
I used to work in a US University where alcoholic drinks were forbidden in university-organized events (you could have it in your housing, but not buy on campus or get the university to pay for alcohol).
The person who organized parties in our department was Hispanic (not me).
Some of the Anglo professors never understood how come they always had a nasty headache after a department celebration, where all they had drunk was that nice, bubbly, sweet Spanish cider… 
Just chiming in to agree with the OP; cider in the UK is always alcoholic, having been deliberately fermented.
Apple juice is sold here in a variety of forms:
Pure apple juice (with tiny suffix ‘from concentrate’) - one litre tetra cartons of reconstituted (i.e. ready to drink) apple juice concentrate - nearly always clear and amber in colour. UHT (long Life) - does not require refrigeration until opened. This is by far the biggest seller.
‘Freshly pressed’ apple juice - usually in plastic bottles (occasionally tetra cartons) in the chiller cabinet - nearly always cloudy and pale green in colour.
Then there will be a number of small volume speciality (expensive) juices, such as filtered fresh pressed and single variety etc.
Frozen concentrate is (AFAIK) not available.
Unfermented cider?! Inconceivable! Gak - how do Americans manage without this nectar?
For seriously good cider, good areas are the southern counties of Britain, but I’ve had some excellent cider from the Vosges in France. It was like paintstripper in strength, but gorgeous.