trowel

He said the peeling knife was his late grandmother's, the sickle had been purchased a decade ago and the trowel, which has a short blade and wooden handle, was a present.

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

“Don’t you have a feeling that this has all happened before?” inquired Stendahl, setting to work with trowel and mortar and brick now.

From "The Martian Chronicles" by Ray Bradbury

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

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

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

From Science Magazine ● Nov. 30, 2023

They are seen carefully inspecting ash and other charred debris on the floor with trowels and removing personal items from a sieve.

From BBC ● Nov. 7, 2023

I hand the gloves to Suraya and the trowels to Ayesha.

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

Stucco — rarely seen in colder climes — can mimic two-foot-thick adobe, when troweled onto wood frames.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 23, 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

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 Howells, William Dean

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 Cooper, Henry St. John

“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 Ballantyne, R. M. (Robert Michael)

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

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 Eaton, Mary, fl. 1823-1849

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 Teixeira de Mattos, Alexander