You think that's lazy?
Guess what the German for lighter is? 'Feuerzeug' (lit. 'fire thing'). The same is true for 'airplane' ('Flugzeug', lit. 'flight thing').
Looks like to me that it was a translation into english from another language. You see more things like this when you translate. In all likely hood the original word was probably like "hearth" but when translating it got a word to word translation which turns into something like "place for fire or fireplace".
"Well, what is it?"
"A place for fire."
"There you go."
"What's that you've got there?"
"I don't know it's orange"
"It IS orange!"
Guess what the German for lighter is? 'Feuerzeug' (lit. 'fire thing'). The same is true for 'airplane' ('Flugzeug', lit. 'flight thing').