dowel

American  

[dau-uhl] / ˈdaʊ əl /

noun

• dowels
  plural

1. Also called dowel pin. Carpentry. a pin, usually round, fitting into holes in two adjacent pieces to prevent their slipping or to align them.

2. a piece of wood driven into a hole drilled in a masonry wall to receive nails, as for fastening woodwork.

3. a round wooden rod of relatively small diameter.

4. 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)

doweled, doweling, dowelled, dowelling

1. to reinforce or furnish with a dowel or dowels.

dowel British  

/ ˈdaʊəl /

noun

1. Also called: dowel pin. a wooden or metal peg that fits into two corresponding holes to join two adjacent parts

---

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• undoweled
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• dowels
  plural

---

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."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

dowel dowels doweled doweling dowelled dowelling

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 oft-recommended dowel and tapered pins from J.K.

From Seattle Times ● Jul. 20, 2021

But most of all she remembered a piece of fabric, about the size of a pillowcase, which hung from a wooden dowel at the bottom of the stairs.

From "Interpreter of Maladies" by Jhumpa Lahiri

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

The wall panels fit together with dowels, sort of like Ikea furniture, Ward added.

From Seattle Times ● Jan. 11, 2023

Using little more than modeling clay and a set of soft, eraser-like dowels, Ms. Gatliff transformed unknown skulls into eerily lifelike busts.

From Washington Post ● Jan. 15, 2020

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

"About drumsticks, eh? Well, just as your drumsticks belong inside your drum, and dowels will not do, so a kitten belongs with its mother, and no one else will do."

From "How the García Girls Lost Their Accents" by Julia Alvarez

Verdi Biographer Francis Toye. &para; Its jackets are built with a doweled spine wide enough to carry lettering.

From Time Magazine Archive

The Finished Library Table The table top is made of several boards which are doweled and glued together.

From Mission Furniture How to Make It, Part 3 by H. H. (Henry Haven) Windsor

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

For example, in assembling framed pieces that are doweled, it is well to glue the dowels into one set of holes beforehand, making tenons of them, as it were.

From Handwork in Wood by William Noyes

Interior woodwork of good design and workmanship everywhere greets the eye, especially noticeable features being the rounding cornices, heavy wainscots and the floors an inch and a half in thickness and doweled together.

From The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia by Frank Cousins

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

The construction may be further strengthened by also doweling the end of this stretcher into the legs.

From Handwork in Wood by William Noyes

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

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

The old house had been built of the best materials, and its woodwork dowelled and mortised and tongued and grooved by men who knew their trade and had not learned to scamp their work.

From The Colonel's Dream by Charles W. (Charles Waddell) Chesnutt

These instruments consist of two pieces of wood dowelled together with twenty holes that taper from 7/16 inch to 3/16 inch.

From Agricultural Implements and Machines in the Collection of the National Museum of History and Technology Smithsonian Studies in History and Technology, No. 17 by John T. Schlebecker

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

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

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

Random Word

Spin the wheel and learn a new word!

---