lumber

Meanings

Noun

• Old furniture or other items that take up room, or are stored away.
• Useless or cumbrous material.
• A pawnbroker's shop, or room for storing articles put in pawn; hence, a pledge, or pawn.
• Wood sawn into planks or otherwise prepared for sale or use, especially as a building material.
• A baseball bat.

Verb

• To move clumsily and heavily; to move slowly.
• To load down with things, to fill, to encumber, to impose an unwanted burden on
• To heap together in disorder.
• To fill or encumber with lumber.

Related

Similar words

• timber
• wood

Origin

• Exact origin unknown. The earliest recorded reference was to heavy, useless objects such as old, discarded furniture. Perhaps from the verb lumber in reference to meaning "awkward to move". Possibly influenced by Lumbar, an obsolete variant of Lombard, the Italian immigrant class known for being pawnbrokers and money-lenders in early England.