to make by carpentry.
to construct (a plot, scene, article, or the like) in a mechanical or unoriginal fashion.
John Alden, 1876–1951, U.S. composer.
(Malcolm) Scott, 1925–2013, U.S. astronaut and oceanographer.
(intr) to do the work of a carpenter
(tr) to make or fit together by or as if by carpentry
1275–1325; Middle English < Anglo-French < Late Latin carpentārius wainwright, equivalent to Latin carpent ( um ) two-wheeled carriage (< Celtic; compare Old Irish carpad chariot) + -ārius -ary; see -er 2
A carpenter is a person who makes things out of wood. You could hire a carpenter to build you a dining room table and two long benches. Carpenters specialize in woodworking, making furniture and buildings from wood and repairing various wooden things. If you wanted beautiful handmade wooden cabinets in your kitchen, you'd hire a carpenter. The word has been around since the 14th century, but it's been a common last name for even longer. It comes from the Late Latin carpentarius, "wagon maker," with its root word carpentum, "wagon."
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Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
His father, Noel Ernest Hord, was a carpenter as well as a pastor.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 2, 2026
"It's a very money-driven society for young adults. When they see a carpenter doing what they like and making a lot of money fast, they see that as aspirational."
From BBC ● Jun. 7, 2026
A friend recommended a carpenter, who helped with the termites and trickier renovations.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 29, 2026
Sprague co-hosted “Run My Renovation” for the DIY Network and was a carpenter on “Trading Spaces.”
From Salon ● Feb. 20, 2026
He was a blue-eyed carpenter in his fifties, a friendly and easygoing native Zeitoun had known for years.
From "Zeitoun" by Dave Eggers
Answering a written question from deputy Lee Carpenter, senator Alan McLean said the removal of GST from essential grocery items in shops would mostly benefit the richest islanders because they spent more.
From BBC ● Jul. 14, 2026
Carpenter & Zuckerman is taking on a growing role in environmental litigation in the region.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 12, 2026
Instead, that honour went to the Sabrina Carpenter duet, Bring Your Love, external.
From BBC ● Jul. 2, 2026
Third, arguments that Chatrie and Carpenter lacked “support in 19th- or 20th-century understandings of the Fourth Amendment” only garnered a minority of justices’ votes.
From Slate ● Jul. 1, 2026
“It was raucous,” Carpenter always said when he finished one of his stories, grinning through his mossy teeth.
From "The Underground Railroad: A Novel" by Colson Whitehead
AI has also made its way into the software used by woodworkers and carpenters.
From BBC ● May 11, 2026
The construction and installation of offshore wind turbines requires the expertise of skilled electrical workers, pipe fitters, welders, pile drivers, iron workers, machinists and carpenters.
From Salon ● May 9, 2026
He said the program isn’t about Hollywood’s stars; it’s about the jobs that productions create, including roles for set designers, carpenters and lighting crews.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 20, 2026
Frank Dario Manfuga, a musician from Cuba, says it was an ad on Facebook recruiting for carpenters in Russia that led him to board a plane in January bound for Moscow.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 11, 2025
When we got home that night, my father phoned the carpenters and the plasterers.
From "The Wednesday Wars" by Gary D. Schmidt
Mines, of course, are highly constructed, carpentered environments—exactly the kind of environment that should produce a large illusion, according to the theory.
From Slate ● Aug. 24, 2025
For Christmas, he’d given her a table he had carpentered himself, and Karen was going to insist on returning it.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 30, 2019
Two farmers down the street asked to get married there last fall; guests ate at tables Sarver carpentered and danced late into the night beneath the barn’s vaulted ceiling and wooden beams.
From Washington Times ● Jun. 25, 2016
It’s open at the bottom, and I saw several people direct puzzled glances at its roughly carpentered interior.
From The New Yorker ● Jun. 15, 2015
Rough stairs carpentered out of two by tens leading down into the darkness.
From "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy
He was a dab hand at carpentering, doctoring, shipbuilding and grape growing.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 1, 2022
His upper body is hefty, his hands coarse from years of carpentering.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 19, 2020
As a sideline to his carpentering and cranberry farming, Finnish Fanner Andrew Paananen took to sanding cranberry bogs in Carver, Mass. For this crop-improving work he got two $15 checks from the Department of Agriculture.
From Time Magazine Archive
For 23 years, English Novelist Phyllis Bentley has been carpentering a literary chronicle of her native Yorkshire.
From Time Magazine Archive
Here, in the evenings, they studied blacksmithing, carpentering, and other necessary arts from books which they had brought out of the farmhouse.
From "Animal Farm: A Fairy Story" by George Orwell
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
