The original Dutch word is "luchtkussenboot" (air pillow boat), but almost exclusively used in Flanders (Belgium) and the southwest of the Netherlands as the English loanword "Hovercraft" is more commonly used.
So the pillow thing is more common than you think.
Same goes for Norwegian - 'Luftputebåt' - 'luft' 'pute' båt' - 'air' 'pillow' 'boat'.
Hovercraft is occasionally used, but many (most?) Norwegians would frown at this in a Norwegian-language text, as luftputebåt does the job perfectly well, thankyouverymuch.
Then again, it is a word which is seldomly used as hovercraft are exceedingly rare around here - AFAIK there has been only one commercial service (incidentally, from the island I currently live on to the nearby town of Ålesund and some surrounding places) - it operated for a few months in 1965, being terminated after the craft capsized for the second time in as many months - more or less.
I can confirm that this is true for Danish too except it is 'luftpudebåd', not 'luftputebåt'. Yes, Danish and Norwegian are very similar.
So luftpudebåd is the proper Danish word and hovercraft is the anglicism that is creeping into our language.
However, I tried to search for both words on Google limiting the results to the Danish top-level domain and apparently there are three times as many results for hovercraft. This may not be the best statistic for linguistics but it's all I have.
I also looked up both words in a Danish encyclopedia (http://denstoredanske.dk). There is no article for 'luftpudebåd' and the article for 'hovercraft' has no mention of the word 'luftpudebåd'.
So perhaps I'm stuck in the past when I claim that the proper Danish word is luftpudebåd...
> but many (most?) Norwegians would frown at this in a Norwegian-language text
That's funny - I think most Dutch people would burst out laughing if they were to encounter 'luchtkussenboot' in a Dutch text. The correct translation of 'hovercraft' into Dutch is 'hovercraft' (at least in my area).
-I've no good reason why, though - in general, we embrace any anglicism we can get our hands on; this includes the mass media.
I've never seen 'hovercraft' used in any of them, though - I guess the reason may be simply that the word -luftputebåt- was introduced in the mid-sixties, prior to anglicisms being in vogue - and then fell out of use just as quickly as hovercraft never caught on here.
Hence, on the few occasions when we need the word, the first that pops into our minds is the Norwegian one.
Just a guess, though. I am by no means a linguist.
"Luftkissenboot" is "air pillow boat". I think those who say "Luftkissenfahrzeug" ("air pillow vehicle") might also be those who say "Fernsprechhandapparat" ("long distance speech hand(held) device") instead of "Hörer" ("(phone) handset").
:-)
But my favorite is "Personenvereinzelungsanlage" (people turn-into-singles device, aka turnstile). It describes very clearly what it does, but not how it does it. Whereas turnstile is silent regarding whether it works or not.
So the pillow thing is more common than you think.