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TIL that löschen is also used to mean extinguishing fires. Firefighter support vehicle, I guess? Or supporting firefighting vehicle?
Hilfeleistungs-Löschgruppen-Fahrzeug is a very odd composite word for Germans too. It's not commonly used, this is probably "Amtsdeutsch“, a bureaucratic way of naming things as accurately as possible. Mostly used like that by government institutions and Microsoft help documents in german.
See also: Umschaltfeststelltaste (Caps Lock) und Gruppenrichtlinienbearbeitungsprogramm (Group policy Editor).
Shudders. This is why I (as a native German speaker) prefer english documentation.
I've played around with changing Windows system languages before and was indeed thrown off by the slew of Gruppenrichtlinienbearbeitungsprogramm-type calques. Glad to know that Germans also find this offputting ;)
Löschen can also mean to offload cargo from a ship if you were only thinking about to delete as a second meaning
Literally it's: Supportserviceextinguishinggroupvehicle, it's a kind of all-rounder firetruck and the most commen one.
The "Hilfeleistung" means that it isn't just for firefighting but also other kinds calls "Technische Hilfe" / technical support
and the "Löschgruppe" refers to the core capability to fight fires as well as the personell on board, a "Gruppe" is a specific tactical unit in german firefighting of 9 people
Löschen can also mean to offload cargo from a ship...
I did not know this one either, and it seems even more different from delete/erase/extinguish. I had to look this up; wiktionary says that the unloading sense is actually from a different root (MND lössen, cognate with "los"), which may have changed due to association with the "erasure" sense, particularly in the context of erasure from ship inventories and logbooks.
Also, thank you for the context. This kind of detail tends to be extremely difficult to search for.
When I was in school many notebooks came with a loose sheet to absorb the ink from our fountain pens. These are called "Löschpapier" (extinguishing paper).
A common joke was, to say you should toss the "Löschpapier" into a fire to extinguish it.
I tried it once. It burned quite well unfortunately.
So an arselöschen would be a means of putting out fires with your bum bum!
I don't think that's how it works. Most compound words are nouns not verbs.
Also ass is "Arsch" not "Arse". You could say Arschlöscher, but if I heard this without context I would think of something that deletes asses.
If I would need to construct a noun that describes a bum bum that extinguishes fires I would say it should be "Löscharsch" maybe even "Feuerlöscharsch".
These are real words in the sense that German speaker should immediately understand them but you will not find them in a dictionary. That's what makes German different from many languages. We can make up understandable compound words on the fly.
I have much to learn.
I just asked a buddy of mine what he thinks an "Arschlöscher" is without context. His answer was a bidet. It fits too perfectly.
Now I will always call bidets ass extinguishers! So thanks for extending my vocabulary.
I am honored to have contributed to the German language.