lumberjack
Americannoun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of lumberjack
Explanation
A lumberjack is someone who cuts down trees professionally. Picture someone holding a chain saw and wearing a plaid flannel shirt and steel-toe boots, and you can picture a lumberjack. These days, lumberjack sounds pretty old-fashioned — the same job is done today, but people who do it are typically called "loggers," and they use power tools like chain saws. Lumberjacks, particularly in the 19th and early 20th century, used hand saws and axes and were famous for being ruggedly independent and physically daring. Lumberjack was coined by Canadians.
Vocabulary lists containing lumberjack
This Week in Words: Current Events Vocabulary for January 7–January 13, 2023
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The Legend of Auntie Po
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This Week in Words: Current Events Vocab for July 19–July 25, 2026
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
He was the genuine artifact, the son of an impoverished Minnesota miner; a lumberjack and a steelworker in his youth.
From Slate ● Sep. 18, 2026
Wanted to get my hands on it, couldn’t, and I’m happy to say that it’s good that I didn’t get my big fat lumberjack hands on it then.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 8, 2026
After ogling old cars, lean into nostalgia in the Meadow Gold District, dotted with retro shops and “muffler men,” giant fiberglass statues of a lumberjack, a cowboy and more.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 20, 2025
Duffy, a former Republican congressman and Fox Business anchor, is also a former world champion lumberjack speed climber and cast member of “The Real World: Boston.”
From Salon ● Oct. 27, 2025
“What do you want to be when you grow up, little girl ?” “A lumberjack in Oregon.”
From "The Woman Warrior" by Maxine Hong Kingston
Deadfall is a particularly thorny problem, and the club’s latter-day lumberjacks head out with chain saws in tow to remove trees upward of 4 feet in diameter.
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 15, 2023
The word “timberbeast” appeared for the first time in The Times yesterday in a story about lumberjacks.
From New York Times ● Dec. 29, 2022
Dinner: Impossible Robert Irvine is in the forests near Mackinaw City, Mich., to create a Paul Bunyan-sized dinner for 50 lumberjacks and a dish for timber show guests.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 19, 2021
But along with the lightkeepers’ journals and the usual suspects like Stevenson and Coleridge, and looking at interviews with lumberjacks from the period, we came across the work of Sarah Orne Jewett.
From Slate ● Oct. 22, 2019
It’s not like we were lumberjacks or anything.
From "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" by Sherman Alexie
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.
