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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The Sword of Summer
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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
After you treat a hole, wait 24 hours, then plug the hole with a short length of wooden dowel coated with wood glue or with steel wool covered with caulk.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 6, 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
Most of them look more fabricky, or almost like a wood or metal dowel that has fabric on the end of it .
From Salon ● Oct. 19, 2021
It’s funny, how you can go years seeing only what you choose to see, and picking your outrage like you pick out a slip, leaving all the others hanging on their 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
The wall panels fit together with dowels, sort of like Ikea furniture, Ward added.
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 11, 2023
And they were loud, enthusiastically hitting empty buckets with wooden dowels, earning them the nickname the Bucket Brigade.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 16, 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
Red, black, and white threads zip in and around a set of dowels.
From "The Belles" by Dhonielle Clayton
Verdi Biographer Francis Toye. ¶ Its jackets are built with a doweled spine wide enough to carry lettering.
From Time Magazine Archive
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
A doweled butt-joint is made by inserting, with glue, dowel-pins into holes bored into the two members.
From Handwork in Wood by William Noyes
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
The felloes were made six inches thick, and were strongly doweled together with seasoned hardwood pins; the linch pin was of hickory or ash; the thills were wood; in fact all of it was wood.
From The Mormon Menace The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite by Alfred Henry Lewis
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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