Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A raised speaking stand in a church, especially such a stand in early Christian churches serving as a lectern or pulpit.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In early Christian churches and basilicas, a raised desk or pulpit from which certain parts of the service were read or chanted and sermons were preached.
  • noun In anatomy, a circumferential fibrocartilage; a fibrocartilaginous ring surrounding an articular cavity, as the glenoid fossa of the scapula and the cotyloid fossa of the innominate bone. Also written ambon.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A large pulpit or reading desk, in the early Christian churches.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A raised platform in an early Christian church; a podium or pulpit.
  • noun informal An ambulance driver.
  • noun informal An ambulance.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a platform raised above the surrounding level to give prominence to the person on it

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Medieval Latin, from Greek ambōn, raised edge.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Late Latin ambō, from Ancient Greek ἄμβων (ambon).

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Shortening of ambulance + -o.

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Examples

  • The altar, like the ambo is now given greater substantiality and gravitas.

    Renovations: St. Mary Church, Marietta, Ohio 2009

  • I had many opportunities of communicating with the natives of Rumbo, and they have clearly a peculiar dialect, resembling exactly what you mention of substituting the final o for a, as in the word ambo for amba.

    The History of Sumatra Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And Manners Of The Native Inhabitants William Marsden 1795

  • "Plus which, there are a lot more people on duty at casualty than we have and we're dealing with 10 or 20 or 30 times the calls the ambo are."

    The Policeman's Blog 2010

  • "Plus which, there are a lot more people on duty at casualty than we have and we're dealing with 10 or 20 or 30 times the calls the ambo are."

    The Policeman's Blog 2010

  • "Plus which, there are a lot more people on duty at casualty than we have and we're dealing with 10 or 20 or 30 times the calls the ambo are."

    The Policeman's Blog 2010

  • "Plus which, there are a lot more people on duty at casualty than we have and we're dealing with 10 or 20 or 30 times the calls the ambo are."

    The Policeman's Blog 2010

  • Today, when we refer to "ambo" most would tend to think of a small, podium like structure from whence the gospel is proclaimed, but of course, one also saw much grander structures particularly in certain earlier centuries.

    Ambos, or Ambones 2009

  • The really interesting part of this story here is that the Bishop's appearance at the Basilica in Minneapolis scheduled for March 28 was cancelled according the announcement from the "ambo" boy, do I hate that word that he was ill and his physicians ordered no travelling.

    Hmmm. Ret'd Bishop Gumbleton was on the Road Again! A Miracle Cure? 2006

  • “mastabah” or stone bench, is often a tall platform and in mosques is a kind of ambo railed round and supported by columns.

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • "mastabah" or stone bench, is often a tall platform and in mosques is a kind of ambo railed round and supported by columns.

    Arabian nights. English Anonymous 1855

Comments

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  • The blue lights of an ambulance and a police car, which were featured in the homeless-people scene, pulsed in the darkness. Simon stood in the middle of it all, and crew members ran up to him with the smallest of questions: Do you like the way they’ve laid out the sleeping bags? What about the way the ambo and the squad car are positioned? (The New Yorker)

    October 16, 2007

  • Ha! Just read that same article, EV. :-)

    October 16, 2007

  • That citation surely refers to an abbreviation of ambulance?

    July 25, 2008

  • "Writing mixes up the seasons, resolving the usual jumble of hot and cold, summer or winter: it reflects the messiness of the body more than any primordial law: it is chaos more than fiat, a battle of giants meant to obstruct the desire to invent oneself according to some divine order: it is with us, a descent, subterranean, underworld, regression, a groping toward totality: it is the gallery that cuts through the edifice end to end, the ambo breaking up the uniformity of narrative space."

    Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 43 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback

    September 18, 2011

  • The Christians stealthily slipped

    To depths of the old Roman crypt.

    By flickering flambeau

    Heard words from the ambo,

    Piously ate and reverently sipped.

    May 8, 2019

  • In Australia this refers to ambulance personnel, not the vehicle.

    May 8, 2019

  • Makes me think of arcades ambo.

    May 9, 2019