timber (n.)
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).
timber (v.)
Old English timbran, timbrian, "to build," verb from the source of timber (n.). It was the chief Old English word for "to build," but now is obsolete in this sense. Compare Dutch timmeren, German zimmern. As "furnish with timber" from 1570s. As a call of warning when a cut tree is about to fall, attested from 1912 in Canadian English. Related: Timbered "wooded, having trees" (1701).
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tiller
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Tilsit
tilt
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timber
timberline
timbre
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Timbuktu
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