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Trough vs Trowel - What's the difference?

trough | trowel |

As nouns the difference between trough and trowel

is that trough is a long, narrow container, open on top, for feeding or watering animals while trowel is a mason’s tool, used in spreading and dressing mortar, and breaking bricks to shape them.

As verbs the difference between trough and trowel

is that trough is to eat in a vulgar style, as if eating from a trough while trowel is to apply a substance with a trowel.

trough

English

(wikipedia trough)

Noun

(en noun)
  • A long, narrow container, open on top, for feeding or watering animals.
    • One of Hank's chores was to slop the pigs' trough each morning and evening.
  • Any similarly shaped container.
  • # (Australia, New Zealand) A rectangular container used for washing or rinsing clothes.
  • Ernest threw his paint brushes into a kind of trough he had fashioned from sheet metal that he kept in the sink.
  • A short, narrow canal designed to hold water until it drains or evaporates.
    • There was a small trough that the sump pump emptied into; it was filled with mosquito larvae.
  • (Canada) A gutter under the eaves of a building; an eaves trough.
    • The troughs were filled with leaves and needed clearing.
  • (agriculture, Australia, New Zealand) A channel for conveying water or other farm liquids (such as milk) from place to place by gravity; any ‘U’ or ‘V’ cross-sectioned irrigation channel.
  • A long, narrow depression between waves or ridges; the low portion of a wave cycle.
    • The buoy bobbed between the crests and troughs of the waves moving across the bay.
    The neurologist pointed to a troubling trough in the pattern of his brain-waves.
  • (meteorology) A linear atmospheric depression associated with a weather front.

    • Verb

    (en verb)
  • To eat in a vulgar style, as if eating from a trough
    • he troughed his way through 3 meat pies.

    References

    * Oxford English Dictionary Online

    See also

    * crib * ditch * trench

    trowel

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A mason’s tool, used in spreading and dressing mortar, and breaking bricks to shape them.
  • 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 ?
  • A tool used for smoothing a mold.

    • Derived terms

    * pointing-trowel

    Verb

  • To apply a substance with a trowel.
    • ''He troweled the coarse mix with a twist, leaving a pattern of arcs.
  • * 2014 , Steve Rose, " Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: a primate scream - first look review", The Guardian , 1 July 2014:
    • 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.