trowel

American  

[trou-uhl] / ˈtraʊ əl /

noun

• trowels
  plural

1. any of various tools having a flat blade with a handle, used for depositing and working mortar, plaster, etc.

2. a similar tool with a curved, scooplike blade, used in gardening for taking up plants, turning up earth, etc.

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verb (used with object)

• trowels,
  present (3rd person singular)
• troweled,
  past participle,  past
• trowelled,
  past participle,  past (especially British)
• troweling,
  present participle
• trowelling
  present participle (especially British)

1. to apply, shape, smooth, or dig with or as if with a trowel.

trowel British  

/ ˈtraʊəl /

noun

1. any of various small hand tools having a flat metal blade attached to a handle, used for scooping or spreading plaster or similar materials

2. a similar tool with a curved blade used by gardeners for lifting plants, etc

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verb

1. (tr) to use a trowel on (plaster, soil, etc)

trowel Idioms  

1. see under lay it on thick.

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• troweler
  noun
• troweller
  noun

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• trowels
  plural

Participles

• troweling
  present
• trowelling
  present
• troweled
  past
• trowelled
  past

Conjugated Forms

Present

• trowel
  simple
• trowels
  simple
• have troweled
  perfect
• have trowelled
  perfect
• has troweled
  perfect
• has trowelled
  perfect
• am troweling
  progressive
• am trowelling
  progressive
• are troweling
  progressive
• are trowelling
  progressive
• is troweling
  progressive
• is trowelling
  progressive
• have been troweling
  perfect progressive
• have been trowelling
  perfect progressive
• has been troweling
  perfect progressive
• has been trowelling
  perfect progressive

Past

• troweled
  simple
• trowelled
  simple
• had troweled
  perfect
• had trowelled
  perfect
• was troweling
  progressive
• was trowelling
  progressive
• were troweling
  progressive
• were trowelling
  progressive
• had been troweling
  perfect progressive
• had been trowelling
  perfect progressive

Future

• will trowel
  simple
• will have troweled
  perfect
• will have trowelled
  perfect
• will be troweling
  progressive
• will be trowelling
  progressive
• will have been troweling
  perfect progressive
• will have been trowelling
  perfect progressive

Etymology

Origin of trowel

1300–50; Middle English < Old French truelle < Late Latin truella, equivalent to Latin tru ( a ) ladle + -ella -elle

Explanation

A trowel is a tool for digging small holes or spreading plaster. If you're an avid gardener (or an apprentice bricklayer), you probably own a trowel. Gardeners use trowels to dig shallow troughs for planting seeds, bulbs, or small plants. Gardening trowels are basically small shovels. When you're building a stone wall or grouting tile, your trowel will look a bit different—it will be flatter and possibly triangular in shape. The Late Latin source of trowel, truella, means "small ladle or dipper."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

trowel trowels troweled trowelled troweling trowelling

You’ll want to bring a trowel, and have a plan for toilet paper.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 13, 2025

This is after all a horror picture, and Stevenson layers on the horror tropes with a trowel, so much so that the movie descends into wretched excessiveness.

From Seattle Times ● Apr. 5, 2024

The team of researchers used a trowel to shave 1 to 2 centimeters of snow from the surface of 130 polar bear prints left near Alaska’s North Slope.

From Science Magazine ● Dec. 5, 2023

Sian Edwards, his wife, used to bang her gardening trowel on the shell to shake off loose earth.

From Washington Times ● Dec. 5, 2023

I grin and look down, feigning interest in my trowel.

From "Internment" by Samira Ahmed

Students carefully remove soil with trowels while moving along paths between areas containing the remains of a 17th-century kitchen, a friar's residence, and the surrounding Potano village.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 22, 2026

LUMEZI, Zambia—Three-year-old Dickson Ngwira was deep into his afternoon nap when half a dozen elephants, using trunks as trowels, gouged a five-foot-wide hole in the brick wall near his bed.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 30, 2026

That’s in no more than half an hour of walking around, without trowels and paintbrushes.

From Science Magazine ● Nov. 30, 2023

Then they bent down with trowels and brushes to sieve the debris through fine mesh screens with holes no wider than one-eighth of an inch.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 31, 2023

Ayesha and I grab small trowels to begin digging little holes in the earth where the seeds will go.

From "Internment" by Samira Ahmed

Or the installers might have troweled on a floor-leveling compound but failed to smooth it.

From Washington Post ● Jan. 16, 2022

At other times he carved into the layers of paint he had troweled on, like mortar between bricks or frosting on cakes.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 13, 2017

The plaster was troweled directly onto the brick walls, making removal difficult.

From Washington Post ● Aug. 1, 2016

So thickly is this dysfunctional dynamic troweled on to the opening episodes that it not only feels fake, but oppressive.

From The Guardian ● Nov. 2, 2015

He mixed the cement and troweled over the hole.

From "Stargirl" by Jerry Spinelli

Paul senses the irony is being rather trowelled on, but it's now too late.

From The Guardian ● Apr. 28, 2013

The ghost of the abstract expressionist Clyfford Still and his sooty trowelled surfaces is intimated in a painting of a slabby night-time wall, illuminated by a single yellow-lit window.

From The Guardian ● Jul. 7, 2010

A layer of thin clay mortar was then spread over the surface and well trowelled until it began to show on the under side.

From Farmers of Forty Centuries; Or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea, and Japan by F. H. (Franklin Hiram) King

“Thank ’ee, mother,” said Jim, with a pleasant nod, as he cut an enormous slice from the loaf, trowelled upon it a mass of the yellow butter, and pushed in his cup for more tea.

From The Battery and the Boiler Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables by R. M. (Robert Michael) Ballantyne

An author may sometimes think he is fulsomely praised and may even feel a sort of disgust for the slab adulation trowelled upon him, but his admirer need not fear being accused of insincerity.

From Imaginary Interviews by William Dean Howells

A detailed analysis of five gardening activities — digging, hoeing, raking, troweling and weeding — found that gardening uses a variety of both upper- and lower-body muscles.

From Washington Post ● Apr. 22, 2022

You’re basically painting or troweling on a thin layer of limestone.

From Seattle Times ● Feb. 3, 2022

Immediately, this dynamo of energy fell in love with the slow, methodical process of mixing mortar, troweling, and stacking bricks.

From Salon ● Oct. 1, 2019

Working in a hot kitchen, troweling french fries into paper bags, isn’t easy, but a lot of people would consider it easier than helping an adult out of bed and to the toilet.

From Washington Times ● Jan. 2, 2019

Laborers carried the mortar down the ladders to the masons who would lay the stones on top of each other, troweling a layer of mortar between each stone and each layer of stones.

From "Cathedral: The Story of Its Construction" by David Macaulay

The Italian version of As Tears Go By has real value to Stones fans, as it has a substantially different arrangement to their orginal English-language recording, trowelling on the medieval knight-in-shining-armour Lady Jane shtick.

From The Guardian ● Mar. 10, 2011

No matter that the larva will perish by this untimely trowelling: the moment has come to wall up the door; the door is walled up.

From The Mason-Bees by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos

Much depends upon the workmen giving it sufficient labour, and trowelling it down.

From The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, Adapted to the Use of Private Families by Mary Eaton

Related Words

• burrow
• inquire