Lumberers

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. People who engage in the profession of cutting and processing trees for wood products
2. Workers specialized in the extraction and handling of timber resources from forests
3. Individuals employed in harvesting trees and transforming logs into usable wood materials

Etymology: "Lumberers" is the plural of "lumberer", a word formed from "lumber" plus the agent suffix "-er". The "-er" ending is inherited from Old English "-ere", which in turn traces back through Proto-Germanic and Proto-Italic to Latin "-arius", a suffix that marked a person connected with a particular activity or trade. The suffix is the same one found in words like "butcher-er" style agent nouns, so the new word simply means one who deals in the thing named by the base. The base word "lumber" is the more interesting part of the story. In its earliest English use it meant useless household odds and ends, or cumbersome junk, and only later came to mean sawn timber. The "lumber" in "lumberer" therefore points to the trade of cutting and moving wood, and "lumberer" names the person who does that work, from felling trees to hauling logs out of the forest.

Synonyms: logger, woodcutter, harvester, forester, sawyer

Antonyms: non-lumberer, urbanite, city dweller, non-farmer, non-logger