Other forms: dowels
A dowel is a short wooden peg that joins two pieces invisibly. Glue the dowel, a dowel joint, drill for dowels.
It works because the glue holds on end grain and long grain at once and the peg stops the parts sliding. Flat-pack furniture is full of them, and getting the holes to line up is the whole difficulty.
1noundowelA short wooden peg that joins two pieces invisibly.
“He drilled a hole in each piece of wood and joined them with a dowel.”
dowel is a peg.
Middle English dowle names the peg, of uncertain origin, perhaps from an Old French word for the socket of a tool.
Old Saxon
*dubil
Middle Low German
dövel — peg, plug
Proto-Indo-European
*dʰel- — curvature, hollow
Proto-Germanic
*dulją — pipe
Frankish
*duli — hollow tube, pipe
Old French
doelle — the hollow part of a tool where the handle is
Middle English
dowle
English, today
dowel
From Middle English dowle, dule, of uncertain origin. Perhaps from Old French doelle (“the hollow part of a tool where the handle is”), from Frankish duli (“hollow tube, pipe”), from Proto-Germanic dulją (“pipe”), from Proto-Indo-European dʰel- (“curvature, hollow”). If so, then cognate with French douelle, douille. Alternatively from Middle Low German dövel (“peg, plug”), from Old Saxon dubil, from Proto-Germanic dubilaz. If so, then cognate with Dutch deuvel (“wooden peg”), German Dübel (“dowel”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA