Entry · catalog no. 1269
timber
/ ˈtɪmbər /TIM-buhr
noun · Harlem, New York · 1930s
✓ Verified
1.
A toothpick. Straight jive metonymy — the wood stands in for the small piece of wood.
“Pass me a timber, I got some of that rib stuck in my teeth.”
Origin & Attribution
Harlem jive of the late 1930s and 1940s, recorded independently by two Black lexicographers of the scene: Cab Calloway, who compiled his Hepster's Dictionary from musicians and entertainers in Harlem and credited Billy Rowe's Pittsburgh Courier column as a first print venue for many of the words, and Dan Burley, whose Original Handbook of Harlem Jive carries the same sense. Calloway disclaimed inventing any of it. The word timber carries several unrelated older slang senses in white and British underworld argot — a thrashing, a wooden leg, a police nightstick — none of which are the source of this one.
1938
First edition of Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary compiles Harlem jive vocabulary
1944
Calloway's sixth edition and Burley's Original Handbook of Harlem Jive both record timber as toothpick
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The Northeast
Harlem, New York · 1930s
Spoken by
Harlem musicians and entertainers
$TIMBERThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Faded88 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
31/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1938
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
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The Bronx, NY
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Philadelphia, PA
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Citations & Sources
■
Cab Calloway, The New Cab Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary — dictionary · 1944
submitted
■
+ Cite a sourceDan Burley, Original Handbook of Harlem Jive, "Jiver's Bible" — handbook · 1944
submitted
See also