Also 6 lumbor, 7 lumbar. [Prob. f. LUMBER v.1, which occurs much earlier. But as a LUMBER-HOUSE or pawnbroker’s shop was in fact a storehouse for such odds and ends of property as are denominated ‘lumber,’ the word was prob. at one time more or less associated with LUMBER sb.2]
1. Disused articles of furniture and the like, which take up room inconveniently, or are removed to be out of the way; useless odds and ends.
1552. Huloet, Baggage, lumbor, or trumperye, scruta.
1587. Wills & Inv. N. C. (Surtees), II. 300. The tobs, kyrnes, stands, dishes, formes, chaires, stoles, and other lumbar.
1596. Unton Invent. (1841), 2. In the Warthrope … ij paire of olde virginalls, and other lumber there.
1622. Mabbe, trans. Aleman’s Guzman d’Alf., I. 3. A deale of lumber and luggage.
1716. Lady M. W. Montagu, ? Lett. to Pope, 10 Oct. in Lett. (1887), I. 130. A catalogue of the rest of the lumber.
1817. L. Hunt, Lett. to C. C. Clarke, in Gentl. Mag., May (1876), 601. All the chaos of packed trunks, lumber,… &c.
1884. Globe, 6 Oct., 2/1. Three pictures … stowed away for nearly fifty years as lumber.
b. fig. Useless or cumbrous material.
1649. Milton, Eikon., xvii. Wks. 1851, III. 466. When Ministers came to have Lands, Houses, Farmes, Coaches, Horses, and the like Lumber.
1709. Pope, Ess. Crit., 613. The bookful blockhead … With loads of learned lumber in his head.
1768. Goldsm., Good-n. Man, II. i. I’m to be a mere article of family lumber.
1858. Darwin, in Life & Lett. II. 127. I should be mere living lumber.
2. Superfluous fat, esp. in horses.
1806–7. J. Beresford, Miseries Hum. Life (1826), i. Introd. With all my fleshy lumber about me.
1885. Sat. Rev., 6 June, 749/2. Plenty of muscle and no lumber.
1891. H. S. Constable, Horses, Sport & War, 15. Good thorough-bred horses have also lost what goes by the name of ‘lumber’—such as lumps of flesh and fat … on the top of the neck. Ibid., 18. Sir Tatton seldom praised a horse without adding ‘there is no lumber about him.’
3. N. Amer. Timber sawn into rough planks or otherwise roughly prepared for the market.
1662. Suffolk (Mass.) Deeds, 26 Aug. Freighted in Boston,… with Beames, for houses, boards … and other Lumber.
1755. Gentl. Mag., XXV. 16. The principle articles of their [Rhode Islanders] trade are horses, lumber, and cheese.
1862. Trollope, N. Amer., I. 107. Timber in Canada is called lumber.
1900. Contemp. Rev., July, 60. The millwright operated the mill giving the supply of bread and lumber.
4. attrib. and Comb., as (sense 1) lumber-garret, -house, -office, -place, -raft; lumber-headed adj.; (sense 3) lumber-boat, -field, -king; -merchant, -products, -raft, -steamer, -wharf; lumber-laden, -preparing adjs.; lumber-act, ? an act of parliament regulating the lumber-trade; lumber-camp, a camp in which lumbermen dwell; lumber-carrier, a vessel employed in the lumber-trade; lumber-cart, ? = jockey-cart (JOCKEY sb. 9); lumber-jack, a lumberman; in quot. attrib.; lumber-line, a railway constructed primarily for carrying lumber; lumber-mill, a sawmill for cutting up lumber; lumber-money, a tax levied upon lumber; lumber-scaler, one who measures up timber; lumber-shover, a laborer in a lumber-yard (slang); lumber-trade, the trade in rough timber; † lumber-troop, a convivial society of London citizens (dissolved in 1859), with a quasi-military organization, its president being styled the ‘colonel’; also allusively; hence lumber-trooper; lumber-wood, a wood where lumber is cut. Also LUMBERMAN, LUMBER-ROOM.
1721. New Hampsh. Prov. Papers (1869), III. 834. A message to the house … for repealing the *lumber Act.
1902. Westm. Gaz., 28 Aug., 2/1. Flat, ugly, *lumber-boats.
1882. Howells, Mod. Instance, II. 139. Down there in the *lumber camp.
1700. New Hampsh. Prov. Papers (1869), III. 104. Coasting vessels and *lumber carriers.
1830. Cunningham, Brit. Paint., II. 228. He was stopt at Whetstone turnpike by a *lumber or jockey cart.
1881. Chicago Times, 4 June. Pineries, *lumber-fields [etc.].
1838. J. W. Croker, in C. Papers (1884), 1 Nov. I should look with more expectation to the *lumber garrets than to the muniment room.
1891. Atkinson, Last of Giant Killers, 100. The usually *lumber-headed old giants.
1728. Pope, Dunc., III. 193. A *Lumber-house of books in ev’ry head.
1896. New York Weekly Witness, 30 Dec., 13/1. To lose the *lumber-jack vote meant to lose the election.
1879. Lumberman’s Gaz., 19 Nov. The *‘lumber lines’ are now getting their new cars ready.
1825. J. Neal, Bro. Jonathan, I. 23. The preacher … had been … a *lumber-merchant.
1901. 19th Cent., Oct., 550. *Lumber mills, saw mills, grist mills.
1715. New Hampsh. Prov. Papers (1868), II. 682. An account of the *lumber mony and excise mony.
1687. T. Brown, Saints in Uproar, Wks. 1730, I. 82. Carry that … halbard to my *lumber-office.
1744. W. Cole, in Willis & Clark, Cambridge (1886), I. 296. Laid up in a *Lumber Place.
1898. Engineering Mag., XVI. 96. *Lumber-rafts can easily be built.
1896. New York Weekly Witness, 30 Dec., 13/1. A famous *lumber-scaler.
1884. S. E. Dawson, Hand-bk. Canada, 129. Quebec [city] is … the centre of the *lumber-trade.
1745. E. Ward’s Compl. Acc. Clubs, title-p., A Compleat and Humorous Account of all the Remarkable Clubs and Societies in the Cities of London and Westminster, From the R—l-S—y down to the *Lumber-Troop, &c.
1805. M. A. Shee, Rhymes on Art (1806), 76. Dolts,… Pass muster in the lumber troop of Taste.
c. 1742. in Hone, Every-day Bk., II. 525. All other institutions, whether … Hiccubites, *Lumber-Troopers, or Free-Masons.
1858. Simmonds, Dict. Trade, *Lumber-wharf, a timber-yard.
1891. N. Y. Sun, in Boston (Mass.) Jrnl., Nov. A man that works in the *lumber-woods.
