timber/timbre
You can build a house out of timber, but that quality which distinguishes the sound produced by one instrument or voice from others is timbre, usually pronounced “TAM-bruh,” so the common expression is “vocal timbre.”
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The Week's End Extra from the Archives: "Cartel Flip-Flop" (June 19, 2012).
In work with musicologists, ethnomusicologists, music teachers, and the occasional music theorist, I have only been familiar with the pronunciation of timbre's second syllable as [buhr] (i.e. "Brr! It's cold outside!" or "The burrs in the dog's thick coat had to be cut out." Never [bruh]. Is there an alternate pronunciation, and if so, where is it used it as the primary pronunciation?
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