I know, it sometimes feels as though you’re carrying a load of lumber on your back, and your lumbar is acting up. And, sometimes, I guess, the pain is too much, and your character, er, your lumber, is just killing you.
Yeah, sometimes lumber can smite you if you drop it on your toe, thumb, whack at someone’s knee, etc.,
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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| Lumbar | Lumber |
|---|---|
A Close-up of the Lumbar Vertebrae From a Posterior View by Anatomography is under the CC BY-SA 2.1 JP license, via Wikimedia Commons. |
Birdseye Maple Lumber by Stephen Ondich is under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license, via Wikimedia Commons. |
| Part of Grammar: | |
| Adjective; Noun
Plural for the noun: lumbars, lumbi |
Noun 1, 2; Verb 1, intransitive 3 & transitive 2
Plural for the noun:
Gerund: lumbering Third person present verb: lumbers |
| Adjective: [Anatomy] Relating to the lower part of the back Of, near, or situated in the part of the back and sides between the lowest ribs and the hipbones Noun: A lumbar vertebra, artery, or the like |
Noun: [Mainly North American] Timber sawn into rough planks or otherwise partly prepared 1 [Mainly British] Articles of furniture or other household items that are no longer useful and inconveniently take up storage space A person regarded as a prospective sexual partner 2 Verb, intransitive: [With adverbial of direction] Move in a slow, heavy, awkward way 3 [Obsolete] Rumble Verb, transitive: [Australian] To arrest
Casually strike up a relationship with (a prospective sexual partner) 2 |
| Examples: | |
| Adjective: She fractured several of her lumbar vertebrae. The lumbar spine is vulnerable. Janie had a backache in her lumbar region. He had a pain in the lumbar region. Noun: “He popped my midback and twisted my lumbar spine — the whole dang thing, just like I’d seen on Chirogram” (Perry). “Probably not; and more especially if it is a lumbar artery, and injured in the foramen through which it passes from the vertebra” (Cox). |
Noun: We’ll need a good bit of lumber for the decking. During the heyday of the Erie Canal, lumber shovers unloaded lumber to or from boats, storage on land, or at a lumber mill (Erie). Put it in the lumber room. He’s in the lumber trade. They end the evening in a disco where they wait for a lumber. Verb, intransitive: A truck filled his mirror and lumbered past. He lumbers along like an old, angry bear. Hey guys, they’re gonna lumber! Verb, transitive: Yours truly got lumbered with delivering all the Christmas boxes and of course, each time I got asked in. They lumbered him with an unfortunate nickname. He was lumbered for rape. He lumbered her from a pub in London. |
| Derivatives: | |
| Adjective: prelumbar, sublumbar | Adjective: lumber, lumbering, lumberless, lumberly Adverb: lumberingly Noun: lumberer, lumbering, lumberjack, lumberjacket, lumberman, lumbermen, lumbersexual, lumberyard |
| History of the Word: | |
| Mid-17th century from the medieval Latin lumbaris, from the Latin lumbus meaning loin. |
|
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 Lumbar versus Lumber
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Apple Dictionary.com
Cox, Joseph Bradford. “Report on Surgery to the Santa Clara County Medical Society.” Project Gutenberg: 2007. <https://www.gutenberg.org/files/23769/23769-h/23769-h.htm>.
Dictionary.com: lumbar
“Erie Canal, New York, 1829.” The Geography of Transport Systems. n.d. Web. 13 Jan 2023. <https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter1/emergence-of-mechanized-transportation-systems/erie-canal-1829/>.
The Free Dictionary: lumbar , lumber
Longman: lumber
Merriam-Webster: lumber
Perry, Grace. “Help, I’m Obsessed with Chiropractors on Instagram.” Outside Online. 21 Apr 2021. Web. 13 Jan 2023. <https://www.outsideonline.com/health/wellness/chiropractors-instagram-chirogram/?utm_campaign=rss&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=xmlfeed>.
Stasio, Marilyn. “Crime.” The New York Times. 24 Nov 1991. Web. 13 Jan 2023. <https://www.nytimes.com/1991/11/24/books/crime-530091.html>. Article.
WordReference: lumber
Yu, Christine. “These are Our Favorite Massage Guns.” Outside Online. 2 June 2021. Web. 13 Jan 2023. <https://www.outsideonline.com/health/training-performance/massage-guns-review-theragun-hypervolt/?utm_campaign=rss&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=xmlfeed>.
Pinterest Photo Credits:
Kitchen Chair, ca.1935, by Rosa Burger, is in the public domain in The National Gallery of Art.
