ambulance

UK/ˈæmbjᵿl(ə)n(t)s/US/ˈæmbjᵿl(ə)n(t)s/

nounA2Very common — you will meet it every day · #1,382 of 15,258leans spoken

Other forms: ambulances

An ambulance is the fast vehicle with a siren that carries sick people to hospital. Blue lights, a stretcher in the back, and two paramedics.

The word came from French and originally meant a mobile field hospital, which is why it has a walking root in it — an ambulance was the hospital that moved. Modern ones are effectively small emergency rooms. English attaches it to the whole service, so calling an ambulance means dialling the emergency number. There is also a proverb about priorities, since an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff is worse than a fence at the top.

Definitions of ambulance

1nounambulanceA vehicle equipped to carry sick or injured people to hospital.A2
“An ambulance arrived within eight minutes.”

Where it comes from

An ambulance was a walking hospital. French replaced the phrase hôpital ambulant, moving hospital, with a single word built on Latin ambulō, to walk about.

French
ambulance
English, today
ambulance

Built from

hôpital ambulant · French — moving hospital

Borrowed from French ambulance. French ambulance, which replaced hôpital ambulant (“moving hospital”) via the suffix -ance, from Latin ambulō (“to walk; to go about”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Body & Health, A Man Called Ove, Vehicles & Machines

First appears in chapter 7 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

ambulance in the wild

Historically, ambulances only transported patients to care, and this remains the case in parts of the developing world.
Emergency medical services
In some systems, members may be present who are qualified only to drive ambulances, with no medical training.
Emergency medical services
EMTs are often employed by public ambulance services, municipal EMS agencies, governments, hospitals, and fire departments.
Emergency medical technician
An ambulance is a medically equipped vehicle used to transport patients to treatment facilities, such as hospitals.
Ambulance
Generally, vehicles count as an ambulance if they can transport patients.
Ambulance

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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