trowel
Americannoun
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trowels
plural
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any of various tools having a flat blade with a handle, used for depositing and working mortar, plaster, etc.
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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
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am trowelingprogressive
-
am trowellingprogressive
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are trowelingprogressive
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are trowellingprogressive
-
is trowelingprogressive
-
is trowellingprogressive
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have been trowelingperfect progressive
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have been trowellingperfect progressive
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has been trowelingperfect progressive
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has been trowellingperfect progressive
Past
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troweledsimple
-
trowelledsimple
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had troweledperfect
-
had trowelledperfect
-
was trowelingprogressive
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was trowellingprogressive
-
were trowelingprogressive
-
were trowellingprogressive
-
had been trowelingperfect progressive
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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:
Mr Rowe was carrying a Japanese-made trowel in its sheath, a small Japanese gardener's sickle and a peeling knife, along with a trug of vegetables.
From BBC ● Aug. 6, 2025
The oatmeal color looks about right and when Risa picks at it with her trowel, the surrounding black and gray debris falls away, revealing the rough outline of a box’s edge.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 4, 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 brought the knife he used for cutting reeds, and I borrowed a trowel from Mae and Birdie’s garden.
From "Willodeen" by Katherine Applegate
Police recovered a garden edger from Manufactum in one of the storage boxes next to other spades, trowels and garden shears.
From BBC ● Jun. 23, 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
Professor Cobb pointed out that "Archaeologists must have their hands free while recording data, since we need to hold our trowels and brushes while digging."
From Science Daily ● Nov. 21, 2024
I listen to the birds in the garden, the chink of our trowels, the trickling of water from a nearby hose, and mostly to the voices in my own head.
From "The Adoration of Jenna Fox" by Mary E. Pearson
Or the installers might have troweled on a floor-leveling compound but failed to smooth it.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 16, 2022
The indoor-outdoor floor plan feels light and airy with white oak floors, troweled plaster walls and high ceilings.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 4, 2019
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
Still Lady Linden prodded and trowelled at the neat bed, still she demanded occasional help from the patient Curtis; and now came a man, breathless and coatless, rushing across the lawn.
From The Imaginary Marriage by Henry St. John Cooper
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
“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
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
In one song near the end, “S/word and Leviathan,” he protects his right to go loud, constructing a big, echoey pattern played on a lute, with faraway vocals, then troweling electric guitar on top.
From New York Times ● Feb. 20, 2011
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
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
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
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
