# timber, lumber, wood



## paradoxa4

Hello. What's the difference between WOOD and LUMBER? Is there any specific chase in order to say that? When should I use these words in context? Or is it alike "stone and rock"?

Thanks in advance.


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## sdgraham

The Word Reference Dictionary that you can reference above has an excellent definition of lumber

As a side note, "stone" and  "rock" are not always synonymous,. either.


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## elianecanspeak

*Wood *is a general term.

*Lumber* refers to wood that will be used for building construction, and cannot be used for fire wood, for example.

*Timber* is wood that is being harvested as the trees are felled. Timberjacks, who cut the trees down, shout "Timber!" to warn others that the tree is about to fall. (I have an imaginary scenario where they yell "Lumber!" by mistake and everyone says "Huh?" instead of moving out of the way and they are all squashed by the tree.)


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## kenny4528

Hi there, just wondering if you think the following sentences are the same?



> So much lumber is being harvested that deforestation has resulted in many areas.
> 
> So much timber is being harvested that deforestation has resulted in many areas.


I ask this because when I typed "lumber harvested" in the google bar then it suggested changing it to "timber harvested". Do they mean the same thing to you in every aspect?


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## panjandrum

It all depends on the target audience, and/or the writer.

In this context, I would expect "timber", but then I'm BE.
I expect that AE speakers would expect "lumber", but I don't know.


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## Chasint

Timber and lumber are different.

Lumber is wood that has been roughly cut into planks. These will later be treated and sized in various ways.

Timber has two distinct meanings
(a) trees that are to be harvested
(b) wood that has been prepared and cut to size ready for sale to builders and carpenters


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## owlman5

I'd use Panjandrum's "timber" to refer to unprocessed logs, Kenny.  To me, you can only harvest timber, which is then processed into lumber at the sawmill.


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## kenny4528

Thanks to all of you~ By the way, owlman5, do you mean you'd rather use "So much timber is being harvested" than "So much lumber is being harvested"?


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## Andygc

Biffo said:


> Lumber is wood that has been roughly cut into planks.


Not in Britain, where it is timber when growing, timber when felled, and timber when it is in the timber yard waiting for builders and carpenters to buy it.


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## Chasint

kenny4528 said:


> Hi there, just wondering if you think the following sentences are the same?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> So much lumber is being harvested that deforestation has resulted in many areas.
> 
> So much timber is being harvested that deforestation has resulted in many areas.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I ask this because when I typed "lumber harvested" in the google bar then it suggested changing it to "timber harvested". Do they mean the same thing to you in every aspect?
Click to expand...

I think we should return to the actual question.

Sentence one is incorrect and that is why you had a suggestion to change it. Lumber is wood that has already been harvested and partially prepared. You cannot harvest lumber any more than you can fish for a kipper.

Sentence two makes sense in both American and British English because timber can be harvested..


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## owlman5

kenny4528 said:


> Thanks to all of you~ By the way, owlman5, do you mean you'd rather use "So much timber is being harvested" than "So much lumber is being harvested"?


That's right, Kenny.  I prefer "timber" in that sentence because people can't really harvest lumber.  I don't call it "lumber" until the wood has been debarked, sawed into planks and dried.


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## sdgraham

owlman5 said:


> That's right, Kenny.  I prefer "timber" in that sentence because people can't really harvest lumber.  I don't call it "lumber" until the wood has been debarked, sawed into planks and dried.



As a grower of timber, I not only agree with this, but point out that there are many wood products and not just lumber that is produced from trees, e.g. newsprint and chipboard.


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## kenny4528

Funny thing is the first of my original sentence is quoted from an English-teaching website whose founder is originally from the Midwestern part of the United States(I assume he made that sentence up though), therefore I even haven't considered the possibility that the sentence could be incorrect, just how you like the use of either of them.


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## Egmont

Wood is a general term that includes lumber and other forms of wood as well. For example, a growing tree is made of wood, but it is not lumber. A jewelry case or a model of a railroad car can be made of wood, but those are not lumber either.

The word _timber_ was mentioned in the previous post. [...]


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## jsharm

*This new question has been added to a previous thread.  Cagey, moderator *

Hi, I'm new here. I've been looking for a forum focusing on British / Australian / US English usage differences. I hope I'm posting in the right place. As an Australian, I have a number of questions about regional English usage differences.

My first question concerns "timber" and "lumber". I'm aware that "lumber" is used a lot in the US. Australians use the word "timber" almost exclusively. Most Australians would know that lumber is more or less timber, but we scarcely use that word (although I have heard of a timber business here called "The Lumber Locker").

My question: In US usage, what's the difference between "timber" and "lumber"? (I work a lot with wood!)

Thanks!


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## sdgraham

This previous thread should help you:

what is the difference between “wood” and “timber”

And, speaking as one who raises and sells trees used for lumber:  "Timber" hereabouts refers to the forest where those trees grow.


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## jsharm

Thanks sdgraham. And what a rapid response. I checked out your link, but it doesn't discuss the word lumber. 

So, you would say "a pile of sawn lumber", right? Whereas we here in the Antipodes would say, "a pile of sawn timber".


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## sdgraham

jsharm said:


> Thanks sdgraham. And what a rapid response. I checked out your link, but it doesn't discuss the word lumber.
> 
> So, you would say "a pile of sawn lumber", right? Whereas we here in the Antipodes would say, "a pile of sawn timber".



1. "wood" and "lumber" work roughly the same in construction.

2 I would not say "sawn lumber," since trees have to pass through a saw to become lumber.


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## jsharm

sdgraham said:


> I would not say "sawn lumber," since trees have to pass through a saw to become lumber.



So, if you saw a pile of wood at the sawmill that had already gone through a saw, what would you call it?


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## Copyright

jsharm said:


> So, if you saw a pile of wood at the sawmill that had already gone through a saw, what would you call it?


Lumber in a lumberyard.


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## Keith Bradford

For me in British English:

*Lumber *= random articles too old to keep and too precious to throw away that you are _lumbered _with.  They are put in a _lumber room_ (e.g. the attic) and forgotten.  Synonym: _junk_.

*Timber *= wood in its commercial form.
*Standing timber* = trees grown commercially and intended for sale.
*Sawn timber* = planks and beams in their rough-cut state.


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## sdgraham

Copyright said:


> Lumber in a lumberyard.


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## Packard

sdgraham said:


> This previous thread should help you:
> 
> what is the difference between “wood” and “timber”
> 
> And, speaking as one who raises and sells trees used for lumber:  "Timber" hereabouts refers to the forest where those trees grow.



That would be my understanding as a woodworker.  Any "timber" that has been cut to size, I would call "lumber".  It could be rough cut or planed to thickness and finished on all four sides.  But once the log has been milled in anyway I would call it "lumber".

Though there are "timber houses" with dressed logs and large "timber frames" and that would be an exception.

This is a timber framed house under construction:







Here are examples of "live edge lumber"





And here are lumber boards sawn four sides (it looks like pine):


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## Keith Bradford

In BE, that's a _timber-framed house, waney-edge timber _and _sawn timber planks_.


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## Packard

Keith Bradford said:


> In BE, that's a _timber-framed house, waney-edge timber _and _sawn timber planks_.



"Timber-framed" may be the preferred spelling in the USA; I really don't know.  

Is that supposed to be "waney edge" or "wavey" edge?

I never heard "live edge lumber" until the last few years.  I think using live edge lumber would have been completely "weird" just 20 years back.  (I have seen "live edge" and live-edge"; I prefer the former.


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## Keith Bradford

Packard said:


> ...Is that supposed to be "waney edge" or "wavey" edge?
> ...


Waney.  See "waney edge" - Recherche Google.

*Wane *(1662) The bevelled edge left on a plank (by reason of one face being narrower than the other) or the imperfect angles of a rough-hewn log (the section of which is thus octagonal).  Source: Shorter OED.


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## GreenWhiteBlue

Apparently, we have a BE/AE split here.  The use of "lumber" for processed timber is an American usage (apparently dating back to the 17th C.), and that is by far the most common meaning for the word "lumber" in AE.

This usage of the word "lumber":


Keith Bradford said:


> random articles too old to keep and too precious to throw away that you are _lumbered _with.


is pretty much unknown in American English.  Most American English speakers also would never have heard or read the term "lumber room", either.


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## ewie

Keith Bradford said:


> In BE, that's a _timber-framed house, waney-edge timber _and _sawn timber planks_.


I assume you mean 'to those in the know', Keith.
To me those three things are:
_a timber-frame house
erm ... dunno ... bits of sawn-up tree
planks
_


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## PaulQ

In BE, there is "lumber-room" which is only marginally related to wood.

OED: *Lumber*: *1.a*. Disused articles of furniture and the like, which take up room inconveniently, or are removed to be out of the way; useless odds and ends.
*1552*   R. Huloet Abcedarium Anglico Latinum   Baggage, lumbor, or trumperye, scruta.
[...]
1884   Globe 6 Oct. 2/1   Three pictures..stowed away for nearly fifty years as lumber.

*b. fig. *Useless or cumbrous material.
1711   Pope Ess. Crit. 35   The Bookful Blockhead..With Loads of Learned Lumber in his Head.

The word is not recorded in the American colonies for another century when it appears meaning "wood"
*1662  * _Suffolk Deeds_(Suffolk County, Mass.) 26 Aug.   Freighted in Boston,..with Beames, for houses, boards..and other Lumber.


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## jsharm

By way of thanks for all above replies to this my first question posted here, I offer this small poem I've composed: 

Around the lumber yard I lumbered,
saw wood sawn and sawn planks numbered
in the thousands, saw men limber, 
lithe and trim from sawing timber.


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## PaulQ

I think we have found the new Poet Laureate.


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## sdgraham

PaulQ said:


> I think we have found the new Poet Laureate.


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## ewie

jsharm said:


> Around the lumber yard I lumbered,
> saw wood sawn and sawn planks numbered
> in the thousands, saw men limber,
> lithe and trim from sawing timber.


Brilliant!


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## heypresto

Ditto. 

It might be fun to start a new thread at the Culture Cafe with this - a thread for poems inspired by answers to questions, and/or grammar and language-related stuff?


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## Delvo

jsharm said:


> I'm aware that "lumber" is used a lot in the US. Australians use the word "timber" almost exclusively. Most Australians would know that lumber is more or less timber, but we scarcely use that word... In US usage, what's the difference between "timber" and "lumber"? (I work a lot with wood!)





GreenWhiteBlue said:


> Apparently, we have a BE/AE split here.


With a twist: I thought Australia usually did things the British way when there's a difference at all, but this time, the Australian paradigm looks like a version of the American one, just with one word dropped and the other taking over its meaning (probably because trees can't grow there ).

I'm a former forester in the USA. My job involved live trees, which were timber if they could be or soon might be cut down to get turned into something else. Trees of the wrong species, or misshapen or scarred or infected trees, or even healthy straight ones of the right species that were just still to young to even think about in that way (seedlings & saplings), were not thought of as timber. Timber was trees that we could at least think of cutting down and using, even if we ended up deciding to wait a few more years. One task we would do sometimes was called a "timber inventory", meaning estimating how much wood a given bit of land had on it, still in the form of living growing trees. At no point in this job did the idea of lumber ever really cross our minds. Lumber was the dead rectangular stuff we would buy form a hardware store like everybody else.


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## PaulQ

The Google Ngram is interesting: of timber_NOUN,of lumber_NOUN,of wood_NOUN


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## jsharm

sdgraham said:


> I would not say "sawn lumber," since trees have to pass through a saw to become lumber.



About "sawn" as an adjective: in Australia we'd say "sawn timber" to distinguish timber that's passed through a saw from, say, harvested logs. Also to distinguish it from "dressed timber", which has been smooth-finished into standard dimensions by planing. We might further make this distinction by the term "rough-sawn timber". Would American or British English use the terms "sawn timber", "rough-sawn timber" or "dressed timber" in the same way?


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## Keith Bradford

jsharm said:


> ... Would ... British English use the terms "sawn timber", "rough-sawn timber" or "dressed timber" in the same way?


I would, sometimes substituting "planed timber" for "dressed timber" if appropriate.


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## Andygc

jsharm said:


> or "dressed timber" in the same way?


That's "PAR" in a BE-speaking timber yard or builders' supplies business = "planed all round". I've not seen "rough-sawn", just "sawn". Confusingly for some, 50x75 PAR does not measure 50x75 - the size is the sawn size.

PS Said "P-A-R" not "par".


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## GreenWhiteBlue

jsharm said:


> About into standard dimensions by planing. We might further make this distinction by the term "rough-sawn timber". Would American or British English use the terms "sawn timber", "rough-sawn timber" or "dressed timber" in the same way?



American English would not.  As noted above (see, for example, posts 17 and 22 above), with only a few exceptions, once the timber has been sawn or dressed, it is no longer timber, but is instead (in American English) "lumber."


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## PaulQ

And then we have "lumberjacks" who deal with whole trees and would never see the sawn/dressed/planed product...


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## Linkway

PaulQ said:


> And then we have "lumberjacks" who deal with whole trees and would never see the sawn/dressed/planed product...




And they shout: "Timber!" when the tree is about to fall.


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## nat4225

Hello,

I would like to know the difference between timber and lumber. According to the dictionary, the two words could be synonyms :





> timber = 'bois, bois de charpente, bois de construction, bois d'œuvre _nm' and _
> lumber ='bois de construction, bois de charpente, bois d'œuvre, bois débité, bois en grumes _nm'_


but @Keith Bradford has warned us (bois industriel) that lumber was not BE. So, I understand that lumber would be AE and timber BE but timber is used in the US apparently
[...]
Thank you very much for your help


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## auptitgallo

Timber: a term common in the United Kingdom and Australia for unprocessed wood (the term _Lumber_ is common in the USA and Canada). 
This is quoted from Wiki, and a certain amount of further detail can be found here: Lumber - Wikipedia

I believe you will find answers to most of your questions here.


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