timber

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun Trees or wooded land considered as a source of wood.
• noun Wood used as a building material; lumber.
• noun A dressed piece of wood, especially a beam in a structure.
• noun Nautical A rib in a ship's frame.
• noun A person considered to have qualities suited for a particular activity.
• transitive verb To support or frame with timbers.
• interjection Used by one cutting down a tree to warn those around that the tree is about to fall.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun In cricket, the stumps; the wickets: usually in the plural.
• noun In mining, a local name for a braced frame forming the roof and side-supports of a gallery or drilt.
• 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.
• To build; make a nest.
• To furnish with timber. See timbered.
• To surmount and decorate, as a crest does a coat of arms.
• noun 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.
• noun Growing trees, yielding wood suitable for constructive uses; trees generally; woods. See timber-tree.
• noun 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.
• noun Stuff; material.
• noun 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.
• noun Nautical, one of the curving pieces of wood branching upward from the keel of a vessel, forming the ribs.
• noun The wooden part of something, as the beam or handle of a spear.
• noun The stocks.
• Constructed of timber; made of wood.
• noun A certain number or tale of skins, being forty of marten, ermine, sable, and the like, and one hundred and twenty of others.
• noun In heraldry, originally, the crest; hence, in modern heraldry, the helmet, miter, coronet, etc., when placed over the arms in a complete achievement.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• transitive verb To furnish with timber; -- chiefly used in the past participle.
• noun (Her.) The crest on a coat of arms.
• noun (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.
• transitive verb obsolete To surmount as a timber does.
• intransitive verb obsolete To light on a tree.
• intransitive verb (Falconry) To make a nest.
• noun 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.
• noun The body, stem, or trunk of a tree.
• noun Fig.: Material for any structure.
• noun 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.
• noun Western U. S. Woods or forest; wooden land.
• noun (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.
• noun (Shipbuilding) Same as Room and space. See under Room.
• noun (Zoöl.) any one of numerous species of beetles the larvæ of which bore in timber.
• noun (Zoöl.), [Local, U. S.] the American woodcock.
• noun (Zoöl.) any species of grouse that inhabits woods, as the ruffed grouse and spruce partridge; -- distinguished from prairie grouse.
• noun (Naut.) a kind of hitch used for temporarily marking fast a rope to a spar. See Illust. under Hitch.
• noun a kind of instrument upon which soldiers were formerly compelled to ride for punishment.
• noun a metal tool or pointed instrument for marking timber.
• noun (Zoöl.) Same as Timber worm, below.
• noun a tree suitable for timber.
• noun (Zoöl.) any larval insect which burrows in timber.
• noun a yard or place where timber is deposited.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun uncountable Trees in a forest regarded as a source of wood.