"ambulance" means: An emergency vehicle designed for transporting seriously ill or injured people to a hospital.. This is a fairly neutral word with no inherent risk attached. There is no real cause for parental concern; it is descriptive vocabulary rather than something dangerous. If your child uses it, context will usually make the meaning clear. A brief, curious question about where they heard it is generally enough to know whether to follow up.
ambulance
An emergency vehicle designed for transporting seriously ill or injured people to a hospital.
Seen in the wild
9 citations · last seen May 2026
Seen in the wild
BlueskyMay 2026
Ambulance is uitgerukt naar Schoutplein in Vlaardingen voor een medische noodsituatie. Verdere details zijn nog onbekend.
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BlueskyMay 2026
NEWS: Richard de Coverly is a paramedic and head of operations at the air ambulance charity that covers Kent. He says increasing fuel costs are a real worry #kmfmnews
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BlueskyMay 2026
Ambulance is naar Narcissenweg in Bleiswijk gestuurd voor een onbekend incident. Geen eerdere meldingen bekend.
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BlueskyMay 2026
Ambulance is uitgerukt naar de Salvador Allendestraat in Rotterdam. Hulpdiensten zijn ter plaatse.
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BlueskyMay 2026
sometimes the helicopter crew has to land miles away then take a regular ambulance with the patient the rest of the way sometimes the hospital turns down patients because of the hassle of coordinating landings and ca…
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Definitions
UK
#1·Apr 27, 2026UK
An emergency vehicle designed for transporting seriously ill or injured people to a hospital.
Origin: , which replaced moving hospital via the suffix -ance, from. Origin information sourced from Wiktionary contributors (CC BY-SA 4.0).
For parents
"ambulance" means: An emergency vehicle designed for transporting seriously ill or injured people to a hospital.. This is a fairly neutral word with no inherent risk attached. There is no real cause for parental concern; it is descriptive vocabulary rather than something dangerous. If your child uses it, context will usually make the meaning clear. A brief, curious question about where they heard it is generally enough to know whether to follow up.
For ESL learners
"ambulance" means: An emergency vehicle designed for transporting seriously ill or injured people to a hospital.. Register: neutral, standard English, usable in most everyday contexts. A common non-native mistake is to use the word in the wrong register, or to assume one fixed meaning when it is actually polysemous; always check the surrounding register and the audience before producing it yourself. In formal writing, prefer a neutral synonym or a short descriptive phrase, and use this word only when you have heard or read it being used naturally in a comparable context.
Heard in the wild
“Ambulance is uitgerukt naar Schoutplein in Vlaardingen voor een medische noodsituatie. Verdere details zijn nog onbekend.”
— Bluesky· May 2026“NEWS: Richard de Coverly is a paramedic and head of operations at the air ambulance charity that covers Kent. He says increasing fuel costs are a real worry #kmfmnews”
— Bluesky· May 2026“Ambulance is naar Narcissenweg in Bleiswijk gestuurd voor een onbekend incident. Geen eerdere meldingen bekend.”
— Bluesky· May 2026
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UK
#2·Apr 27, 2026UK
(UK) A vehicle used for the transportation of dead people, typically to a mortuary.
Heard in the wild
“Ambulance is uitgerukt naar de Salvador Allendestraat in Rotterdam. Hulpdiensten zijn ter plaatse.”
— Bluesky· May 2026“Remember on Thursday that Labour in Wales, after nearly 30 years in power run the worst ambulance service in the UK talkingupscotlandtwo.com/2026/04/29/a...”
— Bluesky· May 2026“Ambulance is met spoed uitgerukt naar de Prinsenlaan in Rotterdam. Verdere details zijn nog niet bekend.”
— Bluesky· May 2026
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UK
#3·Apr 27, 2026UK
(military) A mobile field hospital.
Heard in the wild
“sometimes the helicopter crew has to land miles away then take a regular ambulance with the patient the rest of the way sometimes the hospital turns down patients because of the hassle of coordinating landings and care sometimes patients go by ground taking more time”
— Bluesky· May 2026“Ambulance arriveert met spoed op Tsjaikovskistraat in Capelle aan den IJssel. Geen eerdere meldingen bekend.”
— Bluesky· May 2026“Ambulance met spoed naar Bilderdijkstraat in Capelle aan den IJssel. Geen eerdere meldingen bekend.”
— Bluesky· May 2026
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For specific readers
Why is this section here?
Slang is read by different audiences for very different reasons. The For parents view re-explains the term in plain, non-judgemental language so a caregiver can understand what their child means without needing the surrounding subculture. The For English learners view focuses on register (when it's safe to use), formal alternatives, and common mistakes — what a textbook won't teach you.
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UK
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UK and Irish slang — Cockney, Scouse, Geordie, Yorkshire, Glaswegian, Brummie, Welsh, West Country, plus Irish English. Centuries of regional dialects feeding into modern British and Irish street talk.
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Semantically related
- private ambulance74%
(loosely) Any vehicle which is not a hearse that is used to transport dead bodies for legitimate reasons.
- private ambulance73%
(strictly) A privately-owned non-emergency vehicle, generally used for scheduled patient transport or the transportation of the deceased to a mortuary.
- blood box68%
(slang) An ambulance.