timber

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. Trees or wooded land considered as a source of wood.
2. n. Wood used as a building material; lumber.
3. n. A dressed piece of wood, especially a beam in a structure.
4. n. Nautical A rib in a ship's frame.
5. n. A person considered to have qualities suited for a particular activity: That trainee is executive timber.
6. v. To support or frame with timbers: timber a mine shaft.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. In cricket, the stumps; the wickets: usually in the plural.
2. n. In mining, a local name for a braced frame forming the roof and side-supports of a gallery or drilt. The bottom horizontal element or sill receives two side uprights, usually converging toward the top, and these support the head-piece or lintel under the roof. Planking may go in behind the heavy frame.
3. To furnish (a tunnel, drift, gallery, or other excavation) with braced frames of logs or squared timbers which support the roof and resist the caving in or crushing at the sides.
4. n. Wood suitable for building houses or ships, or for use in carpentry, joinery, etc.; trees cut down and squared or capable of being squared and cut into beams, rafters, planks, boards, etc.
5. n. Growing trees, yielding wood suitable for constructive uses; trees generally; woods. See timber-tree.
6. n. In British law, the kind of tree which a tenant for life may not cut; in general, oak, ash, and elm of the age of twenty years and upward, unless so old as not to have a reasonable quantity of useful wood in them, the limit being, according to some authorities, enough to make a good post. Local customs include also some other trees, such as beech or hornbeam, and
7. n. Stuff; material.
8. n. A single piece of wood, either suitable for use in some construction or already in such use; a beam, either by itself or forming a member of any structure: as, the timbers of a house or of a bridge.
9. n. Nautical, one of the curving pieces of wood branching upward from the keel of a vessel, forming the ribs.
10. n. The wooden part of something, as the beam or handle of a spear.
11. n. The stocks.
12. Constructed of timber; made of wood.
13. To build; make a nest.
14. To furnish with timber. See timbered.
15. n. A certain number or tale of skins, being forty of marten, ermine, sable, and the like, and one hundred and twenty of others.
16. n. In heraldry, originally, the crest; hence, in modern heraldry, the helmet, miter, coronet, etc., when placed over the arms in a complete achievement.
17. To surmount and decorate, as a crest does a coat of arms.

Wiktionary

1. n. uncountable Trees in a forest regarded as a source of wood.
2. n. UK, uncountable Wood that has been pre-cut and is ready for use in construction.
3. n. countable A heavy wooden beam, generally a whole log that has been squared off and used to provide heavy support for something such as a roof. Historically also used in the plural, as in "ship's timbers".
4. interj. Used by loggers to warn others that a tree being felled is falling.
5. v. transitive To fit with timbers.
6. v. falconry, intransitive To light or land on a tree.
7. v. obsolete To make a nest.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Com.) A certain quantity of fur skins, as of martens, ermines, sables, etc., packed between boards; being in some cases forty skins, in others one hundred and twenty; -- called also timmer.
2. n. (Her.) The crest on a coat of arms.
3. v. obsolete To surmount as a timber does.
4. n. That sort of wood which is proper for buildings or for tools, utensils, furniture, carriages, fences, ships, and the like; -- usually said of felled trees, but sometimes of those standing. Cf. lumber, 3.
5. n. The body, stem, or trunk of a tree.
6. n. Fig.: Material for any structure.
7. n. A single piece or squared stick of wood intended for building, or already framed; collectively, the larger pieces or sticks of wood, forming the framework of a house, ship, or other structure, in distinction from the covering or boarding.
8. n. Western U. S. Woods or forest; wooden land.
9. n. (Shipbuilding) A rib, or a curving piece of wood, branching outward from the keel and bending upward in a vertical direction. One timber is composed of several pieces united.
10. v. To furnish with timber; -- chiefly used in the past participle.
11. v. obsolete To light on a tree.
12. v. (Falconry) To make a nest.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a post made of wood
2. n. a beam made of wood
3. n. (music) the distinctive property of a complex sound (a voice or noise or musical sound)
4. n. land that is covered with trees and shrubs
5. n. the wood of trees cut and prepared for use as building material