trowel

A man who was cautioned for carrying a bladed trowel in public has said he was given no choice but to accept the reprimand because police were unable to contact a solicitor for him.

From BBC ● Aug. 6, 2025

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

He picked up his trowel, slid a thin layer of cement on it, and leveled it on the floor, smoothing and stretching it in arcs that formed half circles, like grey rainbows.

From "When I Was Puerto Rican" by Esmeralda Santiago

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

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

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

We work side by side, using flat-bottomed trowels and occasionally shears to cut the vines and roots that weave through the blanket of dirt.

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

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

“Try the beef, guv’ner,” says a gentleman in the style of head-dress known as a “deerstalker,” which he wore while he trowelled his dinner into his mouth with the blade of a very wide knife.

From Original Penny Readings A Series of Short Sketches by George Manville Fenn

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

Laboring to be poetic, it was merely sophomoric, troweling on cliche with such abandon that I found myself wondering if the libretto was deliberately trying to evoke the banality of Marnie’s world.

From Washington Post ● Oct. 20, 2018

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