A wooden peg or pin used in carpentry to join pieces of wood together without nails, fitting into holes drilled in both pieces.
From Old English and Germanic roots related to 'dowel'; the 'l' spelling is an archaic or dialectal variant that appears in historical texts and regional woodworking traditions.
Medieval craftsmen preferred dowels over nails because they were stronger and didn't split expensive wood like they were building the earliest furniture that had to last centuries! Even today, furniture makers use dowels because wood shrinks and swells with humidity, and dowels move with the wood better than metal nails.
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