lumber1
/ˈlʌmbə
/verb [no object, with adverbial of direction]
Move in a slow, heavy, awkward way: a truck lumbered past...
- For as long as I can remember, he has looked like an elephant, heavy and lumbering with big ears and baggy wrinkled skin.
- Not many ordinary people were out on the streets, but there was a heavy population of police and army trucks lumbered ponderously around.
- Manta rays cruise past, turtles lumber along, sharks scope the scene, the odd octopus creeps along the ocean floor, and further out, the whale sharks make their way north.
Synonyms
lurch, stumble, shamble, shuffle, reel, waddle;
trudge, clump, stump, plod, tramp, walk heavily/clumsily, stamp, stomp, thump, thud, bang;
Scottish & Northern Irish sprauchle;
Scottish & Irish traik
informal galumph
clumsy, awkward, heavy-footed, blundering, bumbling, inept, maladroit, uncoordinated, ungainly, oafish, like a bull in a china shop, ungraceful, gauche, lumpish, cumbersome, ponderous, laborious, stolid
informal clodhopping, hulking
archaic lubberly
Origin
Late Middle English lomere, perhaps symbolic of clumsy movement.
The earliest lumber in English meant ‘to move in a slow, heavy, awkward way’. Its origin is not known, but its form may have been intended to suggest clumsiness or heaviness, rather like lump (Middle English). This may have been the origin of lumber in the sense ‘disused furniture and articles that take up space’, but people also associated the term with the old word lumber meaning ‘a pawnbroker's shop’, which was an alteration of Lombard or ‘person from Lombardy’. The mainly North American sense ‘timber sawn into rough planks’ appears to be a development of the ‘disused furniture’ meaning, as is the verb to be lumbered or burdened with something unwanted. The slang phrase in lumber, ‘in trouble’, originally meant ‘in pawn, pawned’.
Rhymes
lumber2
/ˈlʌmbə/noun [mass noun]
1British Articles of furniture or other household items that are no longer useful and inconveniently take up storage space: [as modifier]: a lumber room...
- I grabbed many cans of Lysol, loaded them into the car, and continued to the storage room where lumber lay about.
- In trad Japanese houses, this whole thing is supposed to be placed in a special location built for it between the first and second floors, which is not possible in our house, so the image was leaned against a pile of lumber to party with us.
- Hence perhaps why much is made of the variety of subject matter in Sebald's novels, like a lumber room in a rundown mansion ready for an enthusiast's rummage.
Synonyms
jumble, clutter, odds and ends, bits and pieces, bits and bobs, rummage, bric-a-brac, oddments, miscellanea, sundries, knick-knacks, flotsam and jetsam, cast-offs, white elephants, stuff, things;
rejects, trash, refuse, rubbish, litter
informal junk, odds and sods, gubbins, clobber
2chiefly North American Timber sawn into rough planks or otherwise partly prepared: he sat at a makeshift desk of unfinished lumber [as modifier]: a lumber company...
- A total of six ships have put in here asking for both furs and lumber in the past two months.
- A major trade dispute is brewing over the export of Canadian softwood lumber to the United States.
- Penetrating stains or preservative treatments are preferred for rough sawn lumber.
Synonyms
timber, wood, planks, planking
verb
1 [with object] (usually be lumbered with) British informal Burden (someone) with something unwanted: the banks do not want to be lumbered with a building that they cannot sell...
- Given that it is unlikely that the State will wish to be lumbered with the crushing financial burden of this obsolete dinosaur from a decadent age, an interested body of Sligo citizens should be formed immediately.
- Low cost of ownership through self-tuning, self-management capabilities means suppliers are not lumbered with costly end-user support, and end-users do not have to employ database administrators.
- The bad news is that, apparently, work at Bow Road is due to continue until July 2005, nine months later than originally planned, so you're lumbered with my regular renovation updates for another year at least.
Synonyms
burden, saddle, encumber, hamper, impose on, load, oppress, trouble, tax
informal land, dump something on someone
2 [no object] (usually as noun lumbering) chiefly North American Cut and prepare forest timber for transport and sale: the traditional resource industries of the nation, chiefly fishing and lumbering...
- As part of the agreement, Pacific Lumber agrees to strict monitoring of and restrictions on lumbering in its other forest holdings.
- Fishing, like lumbering, was in decline, and enterprises which produced only red ink were being quickly jettisoned by those who didn't like that colour.
- Fishing and lumbering became major enterprises.
Origin
Mid 16th century: perhaps from lumber1; later associated with obsolete lumber 'pawnbroker's shop'.
lumber3
/ˈlʌmbə/Scottish informal
verb [with object]
Casually strike up a relationship with (a prospective sexual partner): he lumbered her from a pub in London
noun
A person regarded as a prospective sexual partner: they end the evening in a disco where they wait for a lumber...
- The hub was the union where, he said, ‘you could eat, drink and find yourself a lumber for the night, or whatever’.
- In the admittedly unlikely event of his coming back to see how Scotland is progressing, he will have no problem getting a lumber.
Origin
1960s: of unknown origin.