Emergency medical services

Sichten looks as if it came from die Sicht, and an English reader who meets die Sichtung at a major incident may picture someone sighting the injured. German in fact has two verbs spelt alike. One does belong to die Sicht: land, a ship or a missing walker is gesichtet, sighted. The other came into the standard language from Low German, where it meant to sieve. It is a cousin of das Sieb and of English « sift », with the -cht that Low German has where standard German keeps -ft, as in sacht beside sanft. That second verb runs the casualty clearing station. To sichten files or evidence is to go through them and sort them, and die Sichtung does the same with people: it sorts them by urgency, it does not merely look at them. The picture behind the word is a sieve, not a pair of eyes.