Word.ws English Dictionary

biro

/ˈbaɪ.ɹəʊ/

biro noun: a Biro brand ballpoint pen.

biro: a Biro brand ballpoint pen
Image: Trounce, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

biro (countable and uncountable, plural biros)

  1. A Biro brand ballpoint pen.
    • Biro MARKS A TURNING POINT IN THE HISTORY OF Writing
      "BIRO" is unique: it writes with a ballpoint — a point that never goes wrong, never floods, bends or splutters — a point that rolls your writing on to the paper with effortless ease. "BIRO" ink dries as you write; you cannot smudge it; you need...1945 November and December, Railway Magazine, page v, advertisement
    • Frank's Biro taps delicately at the topmost of the little yellow notes.1993, Iain Banks, Complicity, published 2008, unnumbered page
  2. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, broadly) Any ballpoint pen.
    • Massimo's finger was poised above red on his multi-coloured biro like a kangaroo frozen in headlights.2007, Karen Foxlee, The Anatomy of Wings, page 250
  3. (broadly, uncountable) Ink from a ballpoint pen.
    • ‘My very creative 2-year-old son used my good friend′s white polyester Roman blinds as a canvas,’ says Jacqui. They′re now covered in blue biro. And although my friend isn′t too bothered by the biro, I am! Can you help?′2011, Shannon Lush, Jennifer Fleming, Completely Spotless, unnumbered page

Proper noun capitalized: Biro

Biro (plural Biros)

  1. A surname from the Slavic languages.
  2. A brand of ballpoint pen: see biro.

Forms of biro

Noun
pluralbiros
Proper noun
pluralBiros

Origin of biro

Genericized trademark of BIRO, named after László Bíró, the inventor of the first commercially succesful ballpoint pen.

Words that rhyme with biro

Questions about biro

What does biro mean?
Biro means a Biro brand ballpoint pen.
What part of speech is biro?
Biro can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce biro?
Biro is pronounced /ˈbaɪ.ɹəʊ/ (UK).
What is the plural of biro?
The plural of biro is biros.

Words near biro in the dictionary

  1. Birnholtzes
  2. Birnie
  3. Birnies
  4. Birnin Kebbi
  5. Birnirk
  6. biro
  7. Birobidzhan
  8. Birobidzhaner
  9. Birobidzhaners
  10. biroin chal
  11. Birom

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: biro (page history and authors); Biro (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-biro.wav, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Naomi Persephone Amethyst (NaomiAmethyst)-biro.wav.

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