>>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?

Stoker is a perfectly good word but "firemen" is what the coal shovellers on locomotives were called in North America. I had an uncle who was a fireman, then an engineer (of the train variety, not the book learning variety).

You know full well how bad English is. Your "...something that can be confused with the opposite?" brought "cleave" and "inflammable" to mind. There are lots more, but need too much thinking for right now.