sawmill

Etymology

It is a compound from English saw + mill.^{[2][3][4][5][6][7]} The OED compares Dutch zaagmolen and German Sägemühle.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

A mill for sawing timber into planks and boards: 1553, in Richard Eden's translation of Sebastian Münster, A Treatyse of the Newe India.^[2][4][8] Etymonline dates it to the 1550s, and Dictionary.com to 1545–55.^[5][6]

Semantic evolution

The early sawmills were driven by water or wind,^[5] and the OED adds animal power and steam before electricity became usual.^[2] Merriam-Webster and the American Heritage Dictionary also use the word for the sawing machine itself.^[4][9] The derivatives sawmiller, the owner or manager of a sawmill, and sawmilling, the business of sawing wood, followed in the 19th and early 20th centuries.^[10][3] In 19th-century America the reproach "were you born in a sawmill?", said to someone who left a door open and let in a draught, is found from 1860 according to Tréguer.^[11]

Timeline

• 1553 – a mill in which timber is sawn into planks or boards.^[2][4]
• 1860 – born in a sawmill, of a person who leaves a door open.^[11]

Meanings

Noun

1. A factory or plant where logs are sawn into planks and boards by machine: The town grew up around a sawmill on the river.^{[4][9][12][2]}
2. A large machine for sawing logs.^[4][9]

Related words

• saw
• mill

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
7. ^ Gove, Philip Babcock, ed. (1961), Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam
8. ^ Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
9. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
10. ^ Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
11. ^ a b Tréguer, Pascal, Word Histories, wordhistories.net, p. "‘were you born in a sawmill?’ / ‘were you born in a barn?’", 27 December 2021
12. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins