lumber room
- noun
- Archaic
:
cuarto de trastos
- In the corner of the house, there was a lumber room filled with boxes of items they no longer needed.
Examples
-
The fruit room was used for ripening fruit, and when not used for that purpose, it was an extra bedroom or a general lumber room.
Academic text (2015) -
I put it away in the lumber room.
-
But before he shut the heavy door, he walked through the rooms to see that all was all right-- sitting room, bedroom, lumber room, all as they should be.
-
After moving into their new home, they decided to turn the unused space into a lumber room for all their old furniture.
-
The children often explored the lumber room, where forgotten toys and dusty decorations were stored.
Synonyms
755
1.0
A small space for keeping clothes and other things
38
1.8
A room where people keep extra things not used every day
29
1.6
A room where you keep things you do not use often
A small room in a house for storing things or quiet activities
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound is partly compositional — it denotes a room containing 'lumber' — but the conventional sense of 'lumber room' is specifically a place for unused furniture and miscellaneous junk, whereas many learners know 'lumber' only as 'timber/wood'. Because the historical/idiomatic sense of 'lumber' (old furniture/junk) is not obvious from the common 'wood' meaning, a B1 learner who only knows the basic constituent senses may be uncertain without prior exposure.
Etymology
Lumber room comes from lumber, which used to mean 'heavy, unwanted furniture and things'. A lumber room was the place where people kept those bulky items, so today it means 'a room for storing unused furniture'.