timber
pronunciation
How to pronounce timber in British English:
UK [ˈtɪmbə(r)]
How to pronounce timber in American English:
US [ˈtɪmbər]
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- Noun:
- the wood of trees cut and prepared for use as building material
- a beam made of wood
- a post made of wood
- land that is covered with trees and shrubs
- (music) the distinctive property of a complex sound (a voice or noise or musical sound)
Word Origin
- timber
- timber: [OE] Timber originally denoted a ‘building’ – the Lindisfarne Gospels of around 950 translated Mark 13:1 (‘See what manner of stones and what buildings are here’) as ‘See what stones and what timber’. It comes from a prehistoric Germanic *timram, whose German descendant zimmer ‘room’ has remained closer to its semantic roots (but German zimmermann means ‘carpenter’).And this in turn went back to Indo-European *demrom, a derivative of the base *dem-, *dom- ‘build’, from which English also gets dome, domestic, etc. The sense ‘building’ gradually developed into ‘building material’, then ‘wood used for building’, and finally ‘wood’ in general.=> dome, domestic
- timber (n.)
- Old English timber "building, structure," in late Old English "building material, trees suitable for building," and "trees or woods in general," from Proto-Germanic *timran (cognates: Old Saxon timbar "a building, room," Old Frisian timber "wood, building," Old High German zimbar "timber, wooden dwelling, room," Old Norse timbr "timber," German Zimmer "room"), from PIE *deme- "to build," possibly from root *dem- "house, household" (source of Greek domos, Latin domus; see domestic (adj.)). The related Old English verb timbran, timbrian was the chief word for "to build" (compare Dutch timmeren, German zimmern). As a call of warning when a cut tree is about to fall, it is attested from 1912 in Canadian English. Timbers in the nautical slang sense (see shiver (v.2)) is from the specialized meaning "pieces of wood composing the frames of a ship's hull" (1748). The timber-wolf (1846) of the U.S. West is the gray wolf, not confined to forests but so-called to distinguish it from the prairie-wolf (coyote).
Example
- 1. War depleted timber stocks and spurred planting .
- 2. Carpets and timber floors can be replaced with ceramic tiles or concrete .
- 3. Trees affected by the beetle cannot be used for supplying timber or paper .
- 4. The beagle was refitted with new timber planking and copper hull .
- 5. Most rainforest timber is used locally .