Revised as of
5 Jan 2023
It’s the timbre of your voice that’ll make all the difference *not* when yelling TIMBER! just before that tree falls down.
This was actually just a one-off I noted (and mentally corrected as I read) when some character was bringing timbre into his workshop. I suppose he could have been talking or singing to himself, even though the writer never indicated that . . .
Word Confusions . . .
. . . started as my way of dealing with a professional frustration with properly spelled words that were out of context in manuscripts I was editing as well as books I was reviewing. It evolved into a sharing of information with y’all. I’m hoping you’ll share with us words that have been a bête noire for you from either end.
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| Timber | Timbre |
|---|---|
Wood Cutting in a Sawmill is Parvathisri’s pwn work under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license, via Wikimedia Commons. — Men turning timber into lumber. |
0541 Street Band, New Orleans by Mark Morgan Trinidad A is under the CC BY 2.0 license, via Flickr. — The timbre of the music would be different here than inside four walls. |
| Part of Grammar: | |
| Exclamation; Noun; Verb, intransitive & transitive Plural for the noun: timbers Third person present verb: timbers |
Noun
Plural: timbres |
| Exclamation: A lumberjack’s call to warn those in the vicinity that a cut tree is about to fall to the ground Noun:
[Chiefly US] Wooded land [Nautical; in a ship’s frame] One of the curved pieces of wood that spring upward and outward from the keel
[Collective noun] Animal skins, furs Verb, intransitive: Verb, transitive: To support with timber |
[Acoustics, Phonetics] The character or quality given to a sound by its overtones (and not from its pitch and loudness), such as:
[Music] The characteristic quality of sound produced by a particular instrument or voice
[Phonetics] The distinctive tone quality differentiating one vowel or sonant from another |
| Examples: | |
| Exclamation: Tim-m-m-b-b-er! We cried Timber! as our tree fell. Noun: It was a small, charming timber building. We need those contracts to cut timber. “The horn timber comes up from the top of the shaft log and forms a curved backbone all the way to the transom” (Mystic). She is frequently hailed as presidential timber. A timber fell from the roof. Hunters have brought in a timber of ermine skins, marten skins, mink skins, and beaver skins. Verb, intransitive: Verb, transitive: Use a thwart saw when timbering wood across the wood grain. |
He uses trumpet mutes with different timbres to get that sound.
He has a voice high in pitch but rich in timbre. His voice had a deep timbre. The timbre of the violin is far richer than that of the mouth organ. “For that rich, easy timbre you forgive his wooden acting” (Times). |
| Derivatives: | |
| Adjective: timbered, timberless, timbery Noun: timbering, timberland, timberline, timberwork, timberyard |
Adjective: timbral |
| History of the Word: | |
| Old English in the sense of a building, also building material. It is of Germanic origin and related to the German Zimmer meaning room, from an Indo-European root meaning build. | Mid-19th century from the French, which is from the medieval Greek timbanon, which is itself from the Greek tumpanon meaning drum. |
C’mon, get it out of your system, bitch, whine, moan . . . which words are your pet peeves? Also, please note that I try to be as accurate as I can, but mistakes happen or I miss something. Email me if you find errors, so I can fix them . . . and we’ll all benefit!
Satisfy your curiosity about other Word Confusions on its homepage or more generally explore the index of self-editing posts. You may also want to explore Book Layout & Formatting Ideas, Formatting Tips, Grammar Explanations, Linguistics, Publishing Tips, the Properly Punctuated, Writing Ideas and Resources, and Working Your Website.
Resources for Timber versus Timbre
Apple Dictionary.com
Collins Dictionary: timbre
Dictionary.com: timber, timbre
Dictionary of Collective Nouns and Group Terms: timber
“Finishing Up the Horn Timber.” Mystic Seaport.org. May 2015. Web. n.d. <https://www.mysticseaport.org/shipyard/2015/05/finishing-up-the-horn-timber/>.
The Free Dictionary: timbre
The Free Dictionary: timber
Times, Sunday Times. 2011. Web. n.d. <https://www.thetimes.co.uk>.
Pinterest Photo Credits:
Violin, <https://visualhunt.com/f2/photo/501589455/e91e4880bf/&gr;, by born1945 and Old Loam Timber Framing Farm, <https://visualhunt.com/f2/photo/32624062965/20c26f6540/>, by enneafive are both under the CC BY 2.0 license, via VisualHunt.
