Other forms: carpenters
A carpenter is someone who makes and mends things out of wood for a living. Roof timbers, staircases, door frames, the studs hidden inside a wall, the decking in a back garden.
The work is carpentry, and the trade name covers everything from framing a house to hanging a single door. British English splits it further: a carpenter works on site fitting the structure, a joiner works in a workshop making the doors and stairs, and a cabinetmaker makes furniture. Carpenter ants and carpenter bees take their name from the tunnels they bore into wood. Carpenter is also one of the great English trade surnames, standing beside Smith, Baker and Taylor. The one thing a carpenter is not is a builder in general — brick, concrete and plaster belong to other trades.
1nouncarpenterA person whose job is building and repairing things made of wood.
“The carpenter measured the doorway twice before cutting.”
synonyms: joiner, woodworker
carpenter is a skilled tradesperson.
Latin carpentārius did not mean a woodworker at all: it meant a wagon-maker, from carpentum, a two-wheeled carriage. That carpentum was borrowed from the Celtic *karbantos, a war chariot, which makes carpenter and car distant relatives. The word arrived through Anglo-Norman and pushed out the Old English name for the job, trēowwyrhta — 'tree-wright'.
Latin
carpentārius — a carpenter
Anglo-Norman
carpenter
Middle English
carpenter
English, today
carpenter
From Middle English carpenter, from Anglo-Norman carpenter (compare Old French charpentier), from Latin carpentārius (“a carpenter”), from Latin carpentārius (“a wagon-maker, carriage-maker”), from Latin carpentum (“a two-wheeled carriage, coach, or chariot, a cart”), from cel-gau carbantos, from Proto-Celtic karbantos (“chariot, war chariot”), probably related to Proto-Celtic karros (“wagon”). a doublet of carpintero. More at car. Displaced native trēowwyrhta.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA