Lumberyards

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Areas designated for the storage and processing of timber, typically involving the sale of quantities of wood products
2. Facilities where logs are converted into finished wood products and may be sold to builders or manufacturers
3. Locations that function as supply centers for various wood materials, often offering a range of related services and products for construction

Etymology: I don't have an earlier answer in this conversation to revise, so I'll write a fresh etymology for "lumberyards" that avoids any dates not supported by the source and ends without a summary. "Lumberyard" is a compound of "lumber" and "yard," and the parts tell most of the story. "Lumber" first meant useless or cluttered household goods, and only later came to mean sawn timber. The shift is the surprising part: the word for junk became the word for building material. "Yard" in its older sense was an enclosed piece of ground, the same root that gives "enclosure" and, in other languages, "garden." Put together, a lumberyard is simply an enclosed space where timber is stored and cut, and the compound reads plainly because each element keeps its basic meaning. The plural form "lumberyards" just adds the regular -s to the noun.