trowel
Americannoun
-
trowels
plural
-
any of various tools having a flat blade with a handle, used for depositing and working mortar, plaster, etc.
-
a similar tool with a curved, scooplike blade, used in gardening for taking up plants, turning up earth, etc.
verb (used with object)
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trowels,
present (3rd person singular)
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troweled,
past participle, past
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trowelled,
past participle, past (especially British)
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troweling,
present participle
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trowelling
present participle (especially British)
noun
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any of various small hand tools having a flat metal blade attached to a handle, used for scooping or spreading plaster or similar materials
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a similar tool with a curved blade used by gardeners for lifting plants, etc
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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trowelsimple
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trowelssimple
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have troweledperfect
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have trowelledperfect
-
has troweledperfect
-
has trowelledperfect
-
am trowelingprogressive
-
am trowellingprogressive
-
are trowelingprogressive
-
are trowellingprogressive
-
is trowelingprogressive
-
is trowellingprogressive
-
have been trowelingperfect progressive
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have been trowellingperfect progressive
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has been trowelingperfect progressive
-
has been trowellingperfect progressive
Past
-
troweledsimple
-
trowelledsimple
-
had troweledperfect
-
had trowelledperfect
-
was trowelingprogressive
-
was trowellingprogressive
-
were trowelingprogressive
-
were trowellingprogressive
-
had been trowelingperfect progressive
-
had been trowellingperfect progressive
Future
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."
Vocabulary lists containing trowel
Seedfolks
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Written in Bone
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Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
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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:
We used a hand trowel to collect samples in Altadena, Pacific Palisades and Malibu in late March.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 24, 2025
The intros had been written, the praise laid on thick, with a trowel.
From BBC ● Jan. 23, 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
He dropped the tulip bulb and buried the trowel in the dirt.
From "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini
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
Starting from a radius of 3 feet, they gently dig toward the marker from all directions, using shovels and then switching to pointed trowels to scoop debris into dust pans for closer inspection.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 4, 2025
Escaping workers left roof tiles neatly stacked; their pots of lime mortar are still filled, waiting to be used; their trowels and pickaxes remain, although the wooden handles have long since rotted away.
From BBC ● Apr. 11, 2024
Pots and trowels cluttered a high table at one end.
From "The City of Ember" by Jeanne DuPrau
Or the installers might have troweled on a floor-leveling compound but failed to smooth it.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 16, 2022
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
"Connie's Painting" is a square patchwork of heaving gold, red and blue oil paint that Bladen literally troweled on with a palette knife.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 23, 2014
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
The walls were given a coat of plaster and a coat of rough-cast, which was gently trowelled over to smooth the surface slightly.
From Cottage Building in Cob, Pisé, Chalk and Clay a Renaissance (2nd edition) by Clough Williams-Ellis
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
“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
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
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