trowel

plural trowels

1. A mason’s tool, used in spreading and dressing mortar, and breaking bricks to shape them.
2. A gardener’s tool, shaped like a scoop, used in taking up plants, stirring soil etc.

   I need to dig a hole for these begonias; would you pass me that trowel?

3. A tool used for smoothing a mold.

present singular third person trowels · US participle present troweling · UK participle present trowelling · US participle past troweled · US past troweled · UK participle past trowelled · UK past trowelled

1. transitiveTo apply (a substance) with a trowel.

   He troweled the coarse mix with a twist, leaving a pattern of arcs.

2. transitiveTo pass over with a trowel.

   Most finish coats are troweled smooth, but sometimes you will have to add cosmetic touches to make the patch match the surrounding plaster, texturing the surface randomly or uniformly with any of a variety of tools, ranging from sponges to special trowels.

   1980, Robert M. Jones, editor, Walls and Ceilings, Time-Life Books, →ISBN, page 26

3. colloquialfigurativelyTo apply something heavily or unsubtly.

   The whole Planet of the Apes set-up has been ripe for metaphor – from slavery and Afro-American revolution to European conquest of the Americas, even the war on terror. But mercifully, there's no big subtext being troweled on here.

   2014 July 1, Steve Rose, “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: a primate scream - first look review”, in The Guardian