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Timber and Timbre
Timber and timbre are two similar-looking words that appear in very different contexts. At least most of the time.
Timber traces back to an Old English word initially meaning “house” or “building” that also came to mean “building material,” “wood,” and “trees” or “woods.” Timbers are large squared lengths of wood used for building a house or a boat. In British English, timber is also used as a synonym for lumber.
Metaphorical senses followed after centuries of the word’s use: the word used for building material became a word meaning “material” or “stuff” in general (“it’s best-seller timber”) and came also to refer to the qualities of character, experience, or intellect (“managerial timber”).
And, of course, there’s also the interjectional use of “timber!” as a cry to warn of a falling tree; the fact that most people know this despite few of them ever having deployed the word in such a situation is almost certainly due to cartoons.
Timbre is French in origin, which is apparent in its pronunciation: it is often pronounced \TAM-ber\ and, with a more French-influenced second syllable, \TAM-bruh\. The French ancestor of timbre was borrowed at three different times into English, each time with a different meaning, each time reflecting the evolution that the word had made in French.
The first two meanings timbre had in English (it referred to a kind of drum and to the crest on a coat of arms) are now too obscure for entry in this dictionary, but its third meaning survives. Timbre in modern English generally refers to the quality of a sound made by a particular voice or musical instrument; timbre is useful in being distinct from pitch, intensity, and loudness as a descriptor of sound.
But because English is rarely simple about such things, we have also these facts: timber is listed as a variant spelling of timbre. And timbre may also be correctly pronounced just like timber as \TIM-ber\. And the spelling of timber was unsettled for many years; it was sometimes spelled tymmer, tymber, and, yes, timbre. The messy overlapping of these similar words is coincidental: the consequence of the intersection of the different cultures and languages that left their traces on English.
Synonyms
Examples of timber in a Sentence
Brian T. Allen, National Review, 4 Apr. 2024
There are also plans to update the timber fender defenses of the Walt Whitman Bridge and the Benjamin Franklin Bridge in Philadelphia – both of which have support piers in shallow water – over the next few years.
—Cnn.com Wire Service, The Mercury News, 3 Apr. 2024
Angola's growing development needs have caused rampant deforestation for valuable timber and agriculture.
—Alex Postman, Condé Nast Traveler, 1 Apr. 2024
The country’s larger companies — makers of El Dorado rum, timber producers — generate their own electricity outside the power grid.
—Gaiutra Bahadur Keisha Scarville, New York Times, 30 Mar. 2024
Their removal comes amid a thaw in China-Australia relations that’s seen Chinese authorities steadily roll back a number of those barriers including on barley, timber, and coal.
—Simone McCarthy, CNN, 28 Mar. 2024
In recent decades, however, their tropical forest homes have been slashed for timber and cleared to create palm oil plantations, especially in Malaysia and Indonesia.
—Alex Fox, Smithsonian Magazine, 28 Mar. 2024
Beavers’ dam-building and tree-chewing can flood roads and pastures and damage or destroy crops, timber stores and landscaping plantings.
—Alex Wigglesworth, Los Angeles Times, 26 Mar. 2024
On their 123-acre timber farm in Longview, Wash., Lisa and Robert Sudar have all the options.
—Heather Kelly, Washington Post, 23 Mar. 2024
Dina Kaur, The Arizona Republic, 17 Jan. 2024
Trees cover more than two-thirds of Sweden’s landscape, making the country more suited to timber construction than, say, the tree-sparse Middle East.
—William Booth, Washington Post, 31 Oct. 2023
Permanent carbon forests must remain planted with trees, and timber forestry that earns carbon credits is required to replant trees after they are harvested — typically at Year 28 — or face a financial penalty.
—Serena Solomon, New York Times, 11 Aug. 2022
The future acting great was born Angela Brigid Lansbury on Oct. 16, 1925, in London, the daughter of actor Moyna Macgill and timber executive Edgar Lansbury.
—David K. Li, NBC News, 11 Oct. 2022
Sales of construction and timber harvesting equipment climbed 8% as profit increased by 11%.
—Bob Tita and Connor Hart, WSJ, 19 Aug. 2022
That determines whether the state maintains its Forest Stewardship Council certification, which makes Wisconsin timber sales more competitive.
—Tanka Dhakal, Journal Sentinel, 5 Sep. 2022
The Arts & Crafts style interior features dark brown wood floors, timber joinery and bench-tops and tons of thoughtful touches.
—Abby Montanez, Robb Report, 3 Aug. 2022
Brick and timber low-rise buildings with ample natural light, garden space, high ceilings, ease of ingress and egress and amenities including gyms and dog parks are in.
—Hadley Meares, The Hollywood Reporter, 7 June 2022
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'timber.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Dictionary Entries Near timber
Cite this Entry
“Timber.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/timber. Accessed 18 Apr. 2024.
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