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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

lumber.

Wood sawn into planks or otherwise prepared for sale or use, especially as a building material.

6 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈlʌm.bə/Received-Pronunciation/ˈlʌm.bɚ/General-American/ˈlʊm.bə/Northern-England
  1. Wood sawn into planks or otherwise prepared for sale or use, especially as a building material.

    Canada · US · uncountable · usually
  2. Old furniture or other items that take up room, or are stored away.

    archaic · uncountable · usually
  3. Useless or cumbrous material.

    figuratively · uncountable · usually
  4. A pawnbroker's shop, or room for storing articles put in pawn; hence, a pledge, or pawn.

    obsolete · uncountable · usually
  5. A baseball bat.

    slang · uncountable · usually
  6. An erect penis.

    slang · uncountable · usually · vulgar
Where this word comes from

Exact origin unknown. The earliest recorded reference for the noun was to heavy, useless objects such as old, discarded furniture. Perhaps from the verb lumber in reference to meaning "awkward to move"; Online Etymological Dictionary thinks this may derive from the same root as lame. Possibly influenced by Lumbar, an obsolete variant of Lombard, the Italian immigrant class known for being pawnbrokers and money-lenders in early England. Compare English lumpish.

verb/ˈlʌm.bə/Received-Pronunciation/ˈlʌm.bɚ/General-American/ˈlʊm.bə/Northern-England
  1. To move clumsily and heavily; to move slowly.

    intransitive
  2. To load down with things, to fill, to encumber, to impose an unwanted burden on.

    transitive
    They’ve lumbered me with all these suitcases.
    I got lumbered with that boring woman all afternoon.
  3. To heap together in disorder.

  4. To fill or encumber with lumber.

    to lumber up a room
  5. To pawn (goods).

    obsolete · slang · transitive
Where this word comes from

Exact origin unknown. The earliest recorded reference for the noun was to heavy, useless objects such as old, discarded furniture. Perhaps from the verb lumber in reference to meaning "awkward to move"; Online Etymological Dictionary thinks this may derive from the same root as lame. Possibly influenced by Lumbar, an obsolete variant of Lombard, the Italian immigrant class known for being pawnbrokers and money-lenders in early England. Compare English lumpish.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.