this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2025
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Krankenwagen = sick car = ambulance
Krankenhaus = sick house = hospital
German (as well as most of the germanic family) does word construction really well.
Danish uses "hospital" as a word, but they also have "sygehus" (house of the sick).
Apparently, English also has "sickhouse": https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sickhouse#English
Germany has Hospital as well. But it sounds archaic.
If I recall correctly hospitals were just the only "hotels" sick people could afford. So that's where nuns would go to care for them. So more sick people would come because they would get good care there. Until they made the hospitals the official house where they care for sick people.
In Switzerland, the word Spital is in use instead of Krankenhaus