carpenter (n.)

c. 1300, "wheeled vehicle," from Anglo-French carre, Old North French carre, from Vulgar Latin *carra, related to Latin carrum, carrus (plural carra), originally "two-wheeled Celtic war chariot," from Gaulish karros, a Celtic word (compare Old Irish and Welsh carr "cart, wagon," Breton karr "chariot"), from PIE *krsos, from root *kers- "to run." The Celtic-Latin word also made it into Greek, as karron "wagon with four wheels."

"From 16th to 19th c. chiefly poetic, with associations of dignity, solemnity, or splendour ..." [OED]. Used in U.S. by 1826 of railway freight carriages and of passenger coaches on a railway by 1830; by 1862 of streetcars or tramway cars. The extension to "automobile" is by 1896, but between 1831 to the first decade of 20c. the cars meant "railroad train." Car bomb is attested from 1972, in a Northern Ireland context. The Latin word also is the source of Italian and Spanish carro, French char.

Middle English timber "wood cut and prepared for use as building material; wood suitable for making houses or ships or for carpentry;" from Old English timber, originally "building, structure," in late Old English "building material, growing trees yielding wood suitable for building," and by extension "trees or woods in general."

This is reconstructed to be from Proto-Germanic *tem(b)ra- (source also of 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"), according to Watkins from PIE *deme- "to build," possibly a form of the root *dem- meaning "house, household" (source of Greek domos, Latin domus).

For timbers in nautical slang expressions, see shiver (v.2)); the meaning is "pieces of wood composing the frames of a ship's hull" (1748). Slang timber-toes "wooden-legged man" is by 1785.

The timber-wolf (1846), ordinary large wolf of the U.S. West, is the gray wolf, not confined to forests but so-called to distinguish it from the prairie-wolf (coyote). Timberdoodle, colloquial name for the American woodcock, is attested by 1889; earlier the name of an alcoholic drink (1842).