dowel
Americannoun
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dowels
plural
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Also called dowel pin. Carpentry. a pin, usually round, fitting into holes in two adjacent pieces to prevent their slipping or to align them.
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a piece of wood driven into a hole drilled in a masonry wall to receive nails, as for fastening woodwork.
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a round wooden rod of relatively small diameter.
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Dentistry. a peg, usually of metal, set into the root canal of a natural tooth to give additional support to an artificial crown.
verb (used with object)
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of dowel
1300–50; Middle English dowle < Middle Low German dovel plug; compare German Döbel, Dübel, Old High German tubili
Explanation
A dowel is a peg, usually made of wood, that fastens two objects together. A dowel might connect a shelf to a bracket, for example. Dowels are used in furniture making to hold different parts together, such as a table leg and a table top. A dowel usually works by fitting into a slot or hole in each of the two adjacent pieces. Elaborate cakes with many different tiers might have dowels hidden inside them, connecting each separate cake to the next. The word dowel is believed to stem from the same root as the Middle Low German dovel, "plug" or "tap."
Vocabulary lists containing dowel
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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:
By the time she folds it shut with a long wooden dowel, the flatbread is already bubbly and browned.
From Washington Times ● Apr. 21, 2023
Maintenance is easy, too: He just turns it with a rebar dowel and hoses it down when it's dry.
From Salon ● Aug. 18, 2022
No, a guy walks into a gallery, carrying a bar — a wooden dowel painted in bright stripes of color.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 11, 2022
The dowel and tapered pins are the most straightforward, consisting of a single piece.
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 20, 2021
Sarai regarded the row of slips hanging from the slim mesarthium dowel.
From "Strange the Dreamer" by Laini Taylor
The first, Spherae, is a ball-shaped cushion supported by three polished wood dowels that slide through a brass disc and lock into place.
From New York Times ● Apr. 15, 2024
Or create a plant wall by clustering greenery on shelves and wrapping vines around the dowels.
From Washington Post ● Oct. 19, 2022
You can separately buy rings to attach to the ends of pins, which work best with dowels, as opposed to tapered styles.
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 20, 2021
It was the first house I had ever been in that did not have wardrobes, no three-piece set of veneered chipboard, that leaned precariously as the glue loosened in the dowels.
From The New Yorker ● Jan. 6, 2020
The day I wandered into the coal shed looking for trouble I had the drum on my hip and two little dowels for drumsticks.
From "How the García Girls Lost Their Accents" by Julia Alvarez
Verdi Biographer Francis Toye. ¶ Its jackets are built with a doweled spine wide enough to carry lettering.
From Time Magazine Archive
The machines cut and sewed and trimmed and planed and doweled and assembled, but apparently none of them was up to the fine art of spitting tacks.
From The Servant Problem by Robert F. Young
The Top.—The top should be made of three boards, either tongued and grooved, or doweled and glued together.
From Carpentry for Boys In a Simple Language, Including Chapters on Drawing, Laying Out Work, Designing and Architecture With 250 Original Illustrations by James Slough Zerbe
The way we've made that panel, Gus, with those end cleats doweled on and the shellacking of both sides—it'll never warp.
From Radio Boys Cronies Or, Bill Brown's Radio by Wayne Whipple
A doweled miter is one in which one or more dowels are inserted and glued into holes bored into the beveled edges.
From Handwork in Wood by William Noyes
The second section was brought up from Birmingham and was eventually put back together with the larger piece by a stone mason using copper tube doweling.
From BBC ● Oct. 5, 2022
The new supergrip glues have also been a boon to the basement Sheraton: they will hold wood joints together more durably than the most exquisite doweling.
From Time Magazine Archive
There is, to be sure, a prejudice against dowels on the part of cabinet-makers due, possibly, to the willingness to have it appear that doweling is a device of inferior mechanics.
From Handwork in Wood by William Noyes
The construction may be further strengthened by also doweling the end of this stretcher into the legs.
From Handwork in Wood by William Noyes
All these things went into colonial furniture, so beautifully cut, so carefully dowelled and put together, so well made, that many of the things have become heirlooms in the families for which they were constructed.
From Principles of Home Decoration With Practical Examples by Candace Wheeler
These pieces are fitted neatly to the proper size and dowelled firmly together.
From Mission Furniture How to Make It, Part I by H. H. (Henry Haven) Windsor
A. Brackets of large truck-carriages are made each of two pieces, joined by a jog a, and dowelled.
From Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. 1866. Fourth edition. by United States. Navy Dept. Bureau of Ordnance
In this case the bottom is raised from the floor, and may be dadoed into the bottom rails, or dowelled into them or even supported by strips attached along their lower inside edges.
From Handwork in Wood by William Noyes
Water wylger ay wax, woneȝ þat stryede Water wildly ever waxed, abodes that destroyed, Hurled in-to vch hous, hent þat þer dowelled Hurled into each house, seized those that there dwelt.
From Early English Alliterative Poems in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century by Richard Morris
The tools used in dowelling are: Brace, countersink, dowel-rounder, twist bit, try-square, marking-awl, and the usual bench tools.
From Woodwork Joints How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. by William Fairham
At present, mortising and dowelling have come to the front as proper processes, especially for table-building; and this time the style appears under the name of "Mission furniture."
From Principles of Home Decoration With Practical Examples by Candace Wheeler
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