Well it's been a while since I've added anything to this blog -- the reason is my Netbook was on the blink and the screen broke. Anyway here we are again

I was thinking about this word the other day when a colleague flung an envelope on my desk at work that had been sent from the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, the German Centre for Air and Space Travel. "Fahrt" of course always elicits an amusing snigger for English speakers, but I wondered for a moment why "Raum" meant Space. But then of course, Raum just means "room" and of course there's plenty of room in space, which is infinite to all intents and purposes. And English speakers use the words interchangably when, for example, asking someone if they've got any room/space in their car/house. In a much more sinister context, Hitler used to rant on about LEBENSRAUM or "room to live" when he annexed territories neighbouring Germany that had large numbers of Germans living in them.