TIMBER

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does timber mean? 

• TIMBER (noun)
  The noun TIMBER has 5 senses:

1. the wood of trees cut and prepared for use as building material

2. a beam made of wood

3. a post made of wood

4. land that is covered with trees and shrubs

5. (music) the distinctive property of a complex sound (a voice or noise or musical sound)

  Familiarity information: TIMBER used as a noun is common.

 Dictionary entry details 

• TIMBER (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The wood of trees cut and prepared for use as building material

Classified under:

Nouns denoting substances

Synonyms:

lumber; timber

Hypernyms ("timber" is a kind of...):

building material (material used for constructing buildings)

Meronyms (substance of "timber"):

wood (the hard fibrous lignified substance under the bark of trees)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "timber"):

stock (lumber used in the construction of something)

strip (thin piece of wood or metal)

board; plank (a stout length of sawn timber; made in a wide variety of sizes and used for many purposes)

planking (planks collectively; a quantity of planks)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A beam made of wood

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Hypernyms ("timber" is a kind of...):

beam (long thick piece of wood or metal or concrete, etc., used in construction)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "timber"):

sternpost ((nautical) the principal upright timber at the stern of a vessel)

stringer (a long horizontal timber to connect uprights)

two-by-four (a timber measuring (slightly under) 2 inches by 4 inches in cross section)

coulisse (a timber member grooved to take a sliding panel)

Sense 3

Meaning:

A post made of wood

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Hypernyms ("timber" is a kind of...):

post (an upright consisting of a piece of timber or metal fixed firmly in an upright position)

Sense 4

Meaning:

Land that is covered with trees and shrubs

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural objects (not man-made)

Synonyms:

forest; timber; timberland; woodland

Hypernyms ("timber" is a kind of...):

biome (a major biotic community characterized by the dominant forms of plant life and the prevailing climate)

dry land; earth; ground; land; solid ground; terra firma (the solid part of the earth's surface)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "timber"):

greenwood (woodlands in full leaf)

riparian forest (woodlands along the banks of stream or river)

silva; sylva (the forest trees growing in a country or region)

tree farm (a forest (or part of a forest) where trees are grown for commercial use)

Instance hyponyms:

Black Forest; Schwarzwald (a hilly forest region in southwestern Germany)

Wilderness (a wooded region in northeastern Virginia near Spotsylvania where bloody but inconclusive battles were fought in the American Civil War)

Sherwood Forest (an ancient forest in central England; formerly a royal hunting ground; said to be the home of Robin Hood and his merry band)

Sense 5

Meaning:

(music) the distinctive property of a complex sound (a voice or noise or musical sound)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

quality; timber; timbre; tone

Context example:

the muffled tones of the broken bell summoned them to meet

Hypernyms ("timber" is a kind of...):

sound property (an attribute of sound)

Domain category:

music (an artistic form of auditory communication incorporating instrumental or vocal tones in a structured and continuous manner)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "timber"):

plangency; resonance; reverberance; ringing; sonority; sonorousness; vibrancy (having the character of a loud deep sound; the quality of being resonant)

register ((music) the timbre that is characteristic of a certain range and manner of production of the human voice or of different pipe organ stops or of different musical instruments)

shrillness; stridence; stridency (having the timbre of a loud high-pitched sound)

nasality (a quality of the voice that is produced by nasal resonators)

color; coloration; colour; colouration (the timbre of a musical sound)

resonance (the quality imparted to voiced speech sounds by the action of the resonating chambers of the throat and mouth and nasal cavities)

harmonic (any of a series of musical tones whose frequencies are integral multiples of the frequency of a fundamental)

 Context examples 

I was going to forget my timber leg, I was.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

And there on the deck was a single stick of timber to show for a whole morning’s work.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

I have not seen such timber any where in Dorsetshire, as there is now standing in Delaford Hanger!

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

It is not ugly, you see, at this end; there is some fine timber, but the situation of the house is dreadful.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

A band of twenty moose had crossed over from the land of streams and timber, and chief among them was a great bull.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

“Norse Greenlanders needed to trade with Europe for iron and timber, and had mainly walrus products to export in exchange,” said Barrett, lead author of the study.

(Over-hunting walruses contributed to the collapse of Norse Greenland, University of Cambridge)

A splendid park with fine old timber surrounds the house, and the lake, to which my client had referred, lay close to the avenue, about two hundred yards from the building.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

By George, gentlemen, our balls just stuck in her timbers like stones in a mud wall.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Even when within a very short distance of the manor-house, you could see nothing of it, so thick and dark grew the timber of the gloomy wood about it.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

There was rush-grass on that stream—this he remembered well—but no timber, and he would follow it till its first trickle ceased at a divide.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)