>>That is the difference. Firemen and firefighter. I think the original term (back in the 1600s) was fire warden though.
>
>From WordWeb dictionary: fireman
>1. Play in which children take the roles of firemen and pretend to put out a fire
>2. A person who tends fires
>3. A pitcher who does not start the game
>
>But it gave me a good synonym for (2): stoker, and verb stoke. I'm back to 322.
>
>>>>The men who shoveled coal into the boiler for the steam engine were called firemen.
>
>This habit actually confuses me a lot - using a word which has another meaning as well, while there's a completely good unambiguous word (a rarity in English!) out there which doesn't. Why would a stoker be called something that can be confused with his opposite?

Probably because they took it over from Dutch ?

A+
jml