Plural of dowel; cylindrical wooden (or metal) pegs used to join pieces of wood or other materials together.
From the singular 'dowel,' with the regular plural -s suffix added; the origin of 'dowel' itself remains uncertain.
Dowels are deceptively ingenious—they work by distributing stress along their length rather than concentrating it at a single point, which is why a doweled joint can actually be stronger than the surrounding wood.
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