As it's near Christmastime, I've been thinking about the word TANNENBAUM, which means fir tree and is the theme of the famous carol "O Tannenbaum" that may have been sung, by the way, during the truce between British and German soliders at Christmastime during the First World of War. If you look up the lyrics, they commend a fir tree for its loyalty (in being green all year round) and durability (in not losing its leaves in winter). But why is "tree" BAUM? I mean the words don't even sound similar. In fact, English has the word "boom", which is the bottom, horizontal, wooden bit on a sail. Boom traces its roots to BAUM -- in fact, so does the English word "beam", which generally also refers to long piece of wood.

So it's simple really -- a Baum is a beam.