ambulance

[ am-byuh-luhns ]

noun

1. a specially equipped motor vehicle, airplane, ship, etc., for carrying sick or injured people, usually to a hospital.
2. (formerly) a field hospital.

ambulance

/ ˈæmbjʊləns /

noun

1. a motor vehicle designed to carry sick or injured people

Word History and Origins

Origin of ambulance¹

1800–10; < French, equivalent to ( hôpital ) ambul ( ant ) walking (hospital) + -ance -ance. See ambulant

Word History and Origins

Origin of ambulance¹

C19: from French, based on ( hôpital ) ambulant mobile or field (hospital), from Latin ambulāre to walk

Example Sentences

Other pervasive problems included everything from bedbugs and ceiling leaks in hospital buildings, to unpaid gas bills for company ambulances to shortages of medical supplies.

From ProPublica

The plane made an emergency landing in Omsk, near Kazakhstan, where an ambulance waited to take him to a local hospital.

From Vox

A short time later she posted a photo of the inside of an ambulance with the message, “The moment that I feared the most has arrived.”

From Washington Blade

It also freed up enough cash to help the network purchase businesses that owned hospices, home health services, ambulances and a 90-bed rural hospital.

From ProPublica

The ambulance and emergency room bills were just over $12,000.

From Washington Blade

That is a fact recorded by the doctor in charge of the ambulance at the inquest.

From The Daily Beast

By the time the ambulance arrived, over 10 minutes later, it was too late—Mills died soon after arriving at the hospital.

From The Daily Beast

At Woodhull Hospital, the Bed-Stuy ambulance crew kept doing all they could as they wheeled Ramos into the emergency room.

From The Daily Beast

Ramos was still showing no signs of life when they got him on a backboard and into the ambulance.

From The Daily Beast

He then went back to his volunteer corps, which had formed when they did not yet have an ambulance.

From The Daily Beast

Behind that came an army ambulance followed by an electric truck.

From Project Gutenberg

I have got him away in a motor ambulance in the hopes that an operation may save his life.

From Project Gutenberg

As it was long range, the bullet remained in his calf, and he went off in an ambulance to have it dug out.

From Project Gutenberg

For about two hours there was hot firing, and every now and then there was a little work for our ambulance people, but not much.

From Project Gutenberg

But now the ambulance was slowly returning from the place whither it had been sent to receive the dead bodies.

From Project Gutenberg