Lumber

Lumber or timber is wood that is used in any of its stages from felling through readiness for use as structural material for construction, or wood pulp for paper production.

Lumber is supplied either rough or finished. Besides pulpwood, rough lumber is the raw material for furniture-making and other items requiring additional cutting and shaping. It is available in many species, usually hardwoods. Finished lumber is supplied in standard sizes, mostly for the construction industry, primarily softwood from coniferous species including pine, fir and spruce (collectively known as Spruce-pine-fir), cedar, hemlock, but also some hardwood, for high-grade flooring.

In the United Kingdom and Australia, "timber" is a term also used for sawn wood products (that is, boards), whereas generally in the United States and Canada, the product of timber cut into boards is referred to as lumber. In the United States and Canada, timber often refers to the wood contents of standing, live trees that can be used for lumber or fibre production, although it can also be used to describe sawn lumber whose smallest dimension is not less than 5 inches (127 mm).

Note that the word lumberjack is used in the UK and Australia to refer to North Americans who fell standing trees, and so the word "lumber" conjures images of what North Americans call "timber", and vice versa.

 

Source: Wikipedia