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Comment by jimmytidey | Hacker News Reader

What is the prison meaning?

The semantic space that "lager" covers in German is around storage/collection: so it covers concepts that in English are distinguished by worlds like "camp" (storage of people; and is therefore applied to prison camps) and "warehouse". Lager beer is matured in cold storage (like a cellar), hence "Lagerbier" just means "beer kept in storage", roughly.

Because of differing semantic coverage, a lot of words between German and English are not 1:1 mappings. A reverse example is that in English we often speak of generic entrances, while in German you would normally distinguish between an entrance you drive through ("Einfahrt") versus walk ("Eingang").

At UCSD, the campus library is named “Geisel Library” (Geisel means hostage)

The medical school at Dartmouth, too.

>The semantic space that "lager" covers in German is around storage/collection

It's wider than that and covers also the sleeping place of people and animals. Lager is related to lair in English.

But note that "lager beer" is not at all similar to "prison wine".

Wow, I didnt know einfarht bs eingang. For most folks speaking English, such a distinction is not needed. For me, in my work, I have to speak of vehicle versus pedestrian all the damn time.-

Lager also means camp, as in KonzentrationsLAGER (concentration camp)

One could put together a phrase where that one would clearly come out when speaking it out, though not (or not as clearly) in written form, e.g.: "Frag mal den Wirt, welche Alkohol-Konzentration s'Lager-Bier hat"

And it means "bearing" as in "Axialnadellager".

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