Lorraine, there's nothing ludicrous about 'ambulance'. It originally referred to a stretcher used to carry wounded soldiers who had "Fought in a War" (had to get the reference in there somewhere). As the stretcher bearers were walking they were ambulatory, hence 'ambulance'. So the German is obvious and the English is interesting. So there! I think my fave long German word is Strassenbahnhaltestelle, meaning tram stop. I remember a cartoon in my German textbook that had a bank robber (complete with bagful of cash, stripey jumper and mask, natch) approaching a trembling old lady and asking "Wie komme ich am besten zur Strassenbahnhaltestelle?" The German language direclt affects their crime rate. Rob Brennan, is there really a venue in Portsmouth called the Wedgewood Rooms? This conjures up wonderful images of people too afraid to dance or get too drunk for fear of smashing all the china. Who knows, maybe Pompey residents talk about a "mosher in the Wedgewood rooms" rather than a bull in a china shop. _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the undead Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students" +-+ +-+ "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+ +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "peculiarly deranged fanbase" "frighteningly named +-+ +-+ Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+