It's hard to think of the word "timber" without hearing the drawn-out yell of a lumberjack felling a tree. But crashing vegetation is just one step in the life of timber -- from there, it can become anything from the house you live in to the check you sign to pay the mortgage.
Where Timber Comes From
You can refer to boards and planks as timber, but timber gets its start with trees. The art and science of managing the growth and harvesting of these trees is known as forestry. Turning trees into objects starts with logging -- one of the most dangerous jobs in the world.
What Makes Timber, Timber
Of all the materials you could use to build a house, timber is one of the few that used to be alive. The lines, swirls and patterns you see in wood beams, planks and siding are the byproducts of the growth of the tree it came from.
What Timber Begat
Everything made from wood gets its start with timber. Timber has also lent its name to the timber rattler, the timber wolf -- another name for the gray wolf -- and the timber hitch -- a knot for attaching rope to a board or log.
The Surprising Thing About Timber
The piratical oath "Shiver me timbers!" comes from the timbers used to build ships. When a ship struck rough seas or an object -- or vice versa -- the timbers would shake. Another theory is even more violent: that it originally meant "splinter my timbers," since in some dialects the word "shiver" means "splinter."
The Jetsons Conserving Timber
People have used timber for building and craftsmanship for as long as there have been axes to cut down trees. As the world's population grows, the wave of the future in timber will probably be sustainable forestry.
