[f. LUMBER sb.1]

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  1.  trans. To cover, fill up, or obstruct with lumber; to burden uselessly, encumber. Said both of personal agents, and of the things which form the encumbrance. Sometimes with over, up.

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1642.  O. Sedgwicke, Eng. Preserv., 5. An indigested Thicket, lumbred all over with weedes.

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1741.  Richardson, Pamela, II. 81. I hope it [sc. a chapel] will never be lumber’d again.

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1798.  Miller, in Nicolas, Nelson’s Disp. (1846), VII. p. clviii. We … sent our prisoners and their baggage which lumbered our guns, on board the Goliath.

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1824.  W. Irving, T. Trav., I. 328. Empty bottles lumbered the bottom of every closet.

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1825.  Lockhart, Lett., in Smiles, Mem. J. Murray (1891), II. xxvii. 229. I … should be sorry to have them [sc. packages] lumbering your warehouses.

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1840.  R. H. Dana, Bef. Mast, xxix. 98. The decks were lumbered up with everything.

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1845.  Ford, Handbk. Spain, I. 49. There is no worse mistake than lumbering oneself with things that are never wanted.

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1861.  Tulloch, Eng. Purit., ii. 247. The more details of controversy … lumber his style.

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1866.  Howells, Venet. Life, 148. I could not, in any honesty, lumber my pages with descriptions.

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1867.  Trollope, Chron. Barset, I. xxxvii. 319. One side and two angles of the court are always lumbered with crates, hampers, [etc.].

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1901.  Edin. Rev., Oct., 261. The ships of war were lumbered up with the soldiers.

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  b.  intr. To lie as lumber.

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1850.  D. Macmillan, in Life (1882), ii. 11. A queer mass of rubbish to lie lumbering in any one’s brain.

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  2.  To heap or place together as lumber, without order or method; to deposit as lumber.

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1678.  T. Rymer, Trag. Last Age, 41. In Rollo we meet with so much stuff lumberd together.

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1733.  Mallet, Verbal Crit., 16. With all their refuse lumber’d in his head.

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1805.  M. A. Shee, Rhymes on Art, 369. How that [sc. picture], long … lumber’d in some filthy broker’s stall, Lay, lost to fame.

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  3.  intr. To perform the labor or carry on the business of cutting forest timber and preparing it for the market. occas. trans. (N. Amer.)

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1809.  Kendall, Trav., III. lxviii. 73. The verb to lumber has also the … sense, to procure or even to manufacture lumber.

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1870.  Maine Rep., LVI. 566. The plaintiff lumbered on his township called Holeb.

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1891.  R. A. Alger, in Voice (N. Y.), 15 Oct. I … commenced lumbering in a small way. Ibid. We then lumbered a million and a quarter feet a year.

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1893.  Scribner’s Mag., June, 711/1. They bought and lumbered timber on their own account.

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