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Photo of some spanners.

List of tools

Tools for making things, and for cleaning around the house. Sometimes you need the cleaning tools because you made a mess with the making tools!

View in the Videographic Dictionary

Photo of a screwdriver
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A screwdriver is used for tightening and loosening screws. Screws are threaded so that they are less likely to pull out once they have been tightened, unlike nails. Screws come with different shaped holes in the top, and the ends of screwdrivers come in the same shapes. The commonest ones are flathead or slotted head, and phillips head (cross shaped).
Photo of a scythe
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Sis forScythe

A scythe is a long-handled tool that is still used in some parts of the world to mow grass. Modern machinery is used today instead of scythes for the same job. Today, the scythe is associated with death and the Grim Reaper.
Photo of some old secateurs
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Secateurs, also called pruning shears, are a kind of scissor designed for cutting through the stems of plants. They have a different design to regular scissors to give them the extra strength needed to cut through wood.

Sis forShovel

A shovel is used to move loose but heavy things like gravel, dirt, snow or coal. It has a fairly wide, flat metal scoop at one end and a wooden handle at the other. A shovel is very similar to a spade.
Photo of sickles
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Sis forSickle

A sickle is a cutting tool with a curved blade that used to be used to harvest grain by hand. Sickles are still used in some developing countries but in developed countries they have been largely superseded by mechanical harvesters.

Sis forSpade

A spade is very similar to a shovel but a spade tends to have a pointed end for digging and a shovel has a flat end for moving loose materials.
Photo of three wrenches
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Sis forSpanner

A spanner is another name for a wrench.
A spirit level, or bubble level is a tool that is used to tell if something is horizontal or vertical. Spirit levels have one or more small tubes filled with liquid in them, with a bubble of air in the liquid. When the bubble is in the centre of the liquid, the spirit level is straight.

Sis forStapler

A stapler is a device that punches a small piece of wire called a staple through several sheets of paper to hold them together.

Tis forTape

A tape is a long strip of plastic, cloth or paper. Some kinds of tape have a sticky material on one side. You use sticky tape to hold things together or hang a poster on the wall.