Word.ws English Dictionary

blue-pencil

blue-pencil verb: to edit, especially to censor, written documents.

Verb

blue-pencil (third-person singular simple present blue-pencils, present participle (US) blue-penciling or (UK) blue-pencilling, simple past and past participle (US) blue-penciled or (UK) blue-pencilled)

  1. (transitive) To edit, especially to censor, written documents.
  2. (slang) To use a line-item veto.

Forms of blue-pencil

third-person singular presentblue-pencils
present participle USblue-penciling
present participle UKblue-pencilling
past participle USblue-penciled
past USblue-penciled
past participle UKblue-pencilled
past UKblue-pencilled

Origin of blue-pencil

From blue + pencil.

Questions about blue-pencil

What does blue-pencil mean?
Blue-pencil means to edit, especially to censor, written documents.
What part of speech is blue-pencil?
Blue-pencil is a verb.
What is the past tense of blue-pencil?
The past tense of blue-pencil is blue-penciled.

Words near blue-pencil in the dictionary

  1. blue-necked ostrich
  2. blue-necked ostriches
  3. blue-nosed
  4. blue-ocean
  5. blue-on-blue
  6. blue-pencil
  7. blue-penciled
  8. blue-penciling
  9. blue-pencilled
  10. blue-pencilling
  11. blue-pencils

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: blue-pencil (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: En-au-blue-pencil.ogg.

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