Veterinary medicine

One verb on this list does three quite different jobs, and the setting alone tells you which. On the examination table abhören means to listen to the heart and lungs through a stethoscope: Sie hört das Herz ab. In a newspaper the same verb means to tap a telephone or bug a room, and der Abhörskandal has nothing medical about it. At a kitchen table the evening before a test it is what a parent does with a child’s vocabulary: Vokabeln abhören, to hear them and check them. All three are separable, so in a main clause the ab moves to the end in every one of them. A vet who wants to avoid the ambiguity in a written report uses auskultieren, which has only the first meaning. The patient itself says nothing, so the rest of the history comes from the owner and has a name of its own: der Vorbericht.