Meaning & use
trowel
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Meanings
nouncountable
A small hand tool with a curved, scoop-shaped blade, used in the garden for digging holes and moving soil.
Grammar: Countable: a garden trowel, two trowels.
Patterns
- dig with a trowel
She dug a hole with a trowel and planted the seedling.
Keep a trowel in the shed for transplanting bulbs.
He wiped the soil off the trowel before putting it away.
nouncountable
A flat, pointed hand tool used by builders to spread cement, plaster or mortar.
Grammar: Countable; builders carry several shapes of trowel.
Patterns
- spread something with a trowel
The mason scraped the mortar off with his trowel.
She smoothed the wet plaster with a flat trowel.
verbtransitivetechnical
To spread or smooth something with a trowel.
Grammar: Takes an object: trowel the plaster.
Patterns
- trowel something on
- trowel something smooth
The workers troweled the concrete until it was flat.
He troweled a layer of plaster onto the wall.
Word forms
| plural | trowels |
|---|---|
| third person singular | trowels |
| past tense | troweled |
| past participle | troweled |
| -ing form | troweling |
Common combinations
- garden trowel
- Use a garden trowel to loosen the soil.
- pointing trowel
- A pointing trowel is good for filling brick joints.
- lay on with a trowel
- They laid the cement on with a trowel.
- hand trowel
- I keep a hand trowel next to the flower bed.
- lay it on with a trowel
- He flattered the boss, laying it on with a trowel.
Synonyms and how they differ
- spade
- A spade is a larger, long-handled tool for digging, and a trowel is small enough to hold in one hand.
- scoop
- A scoop is any shovel-like tool for lifting loose material, whereas a trowel is shaped for soil or mortar.
- float
- A float is a flat builder's tool for smoothing plaster or concrete, similar in use to a plastering trowel.
- dibber
- A dibber is a pointed stick for making planting holes, and a trowel digs wider holes.
Word family
- troweled adjective
- smoothed with a trowel
- troweling noun
- the act of spreading with a trowel
- trowelful noun
- the amount a trowel can hold
Commonly confused: trowel or towel? trowel or trawl?
trowel vs towel
A towel is a piece of cloth for drying things. The words look alike but have different meanings and sounds.
trowel vs trawl
To trawl is to fish with a net or search through a lot of material. It sounds nothing like trowel.
Practice
To plant the tulip bulbs, she dug small holes with a ___.
Choose one answer.
A trowel is a small hand tool for digging. A towel dries things, a trellis supports plants and a tripod holds a camera.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “trowel”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.