Word.ws English Dictionary

bowdrill

bowdrill is the alternative form of bow drill.

Meaning of bow drill

Noun

bow drill (plural bow drills)

  1. A simple rotational hand-operated tool of prehistoric origin, used as a fire drill for ignition, or for other drilling tasks such as woodwork and dentistry.
    • [I]n the year 1000 the trepanner had at his disposal the semi-mechanical bow drill that was used by carpenters and masons of the time.1999, Robert Lacey, Danny Danziger, The Year 1000: What life was like at the turn of The First Millennium, London: Abacus, published 2000, page 124

Forms of bowdrill

pluralbowdrills

Questions about bowdrill

What is bowdrill the alternative form of?
Bowdrill is the alternative form of bow drill.

Words near bowdrill in the dictionary

  1. bowdlerizing
  2. Bowdoin
  3. Bowdoinham
  4. Bowdoins
  5. Bowdon
  6. bowdrill
  7. Bowdry
  8. Bowdrys
  9. bowe
  10. bowed
  11. bowed and scraped

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bowdrill (page history and authors); bow drill (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “bowdrill.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bowdrill. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.