Timber, Underbrush, Weald: Origins, Forms, Histories of Words Meaning Woodland

The natural features of a region are its topography (Greek topos, "place"). One important kind of topographic feature is woodland. Woods of various kinds and sizes, as well as related natural and human-made features, have many different names.

In the current alphabetic series of such terms, here are the origins, forms, and histories of timber, timberland, timberline, underbrush, undergrowth, underwood, and weald.

Timber, Timberland, Timberline
Modern English timber goes back through Middle English timber to Old English timber (before 12th century). The word is akin to Old High German zimbar ("wood, room"), Greek demein ("to build"), and Greek demos ("course of stones or bricks").

The early meanings of timber include a building (before 750, obsolete) and building material generally (before 900, obsolete).

Because wood is used as building material, the word timber also came to denote the wood of growing trees, hence collectively the trees themselves (c. 893).

Timberland (1654) is wooded land. The term usually refers to an area that grows marketable timber.

The timberline (1867) is the upper limit of tree growth in mountains or high latitudes. The term is sometimes spelled timber line.

Underbrush, Undergrowth, Underwood
Underbrush (1775) is shrubs, bushes, or small trees growing beneath large trees in a wood or forest.

Undergrowth (1600) is low growth on the floor of a forest, including seedlings, saplings, herbs, and shrubs.

Underwood (14th century) is both underbrush and undergrowth.

Weald
The Modern English common noun weald (16th century) comes from The Weald, the name of a wooded, formerly heavily forested, area in Kent, Surrey, East Sussex, and West Sussex counties in southeast England, lying between the North and South Downs. The Weald itself is an altered form (influenced by Old English weald) of the Middle English name for the district, Weeld (15th century), from Old English weald ("wood, forest," before 12th century).

The modern word weald, then, is a 16th-century readoption of the Old English form, which had been abandoned for centuries in favor of other spellings, such as welde (13th century) and weelde (15th century).

As a modern common noun, weald denotes any forest or heavily wooded area (1544). It is often used in a poetic context.
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Encyclopaedia Britannica Ready Reference 2004. CD-ROM. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2004.

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. 11th ed. Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 2006.

Merriam-Webster's Geographical Dictionary. 3rd ed. Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 2007.

The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1989.