Word.ws English Dictionary

pen in

pen in verb: to enclose (animals) in a pen.

Verb

pen in (third-person singular simple present pens in, present participle penning in, simple past and past participle penned in)

  1. To enclose (animals) in a pen.
    1. (broadly, figuratively) To cause to be stuck in a situation; to be forced into a situation by circumstances.
  2. To schedule; fix a date for.
    • She wanted to say regardless of who got the contract, they should get out a calendar and pen it in.2012, Robin Bielman, Worth the Risk, →ISBN
    • That's what I encourage you to do, too: pick a time with your partner that will generally work for both of you and pen it in to your calendars, bearing in mind that you will probably need to adjust it every now and then.2012, Susan Downing, The Heart of Reiki, →ISBN, page 31

Forms of pen in

third-person singular presentpens in
present participlepenning in
past participlepenned in
pastpenned in

Questions about pen in

What does pen in mean?
Pen in means to enclose (animals) in a pen.
What part of speech is pen in?
Pen in is a verb.
What is the past tense of pen in?
The past tense of pen in is penned in.

Words near pen in in the dictionary

  1. pen drives
  2. pen friend
  3. pen friends
  4. pen gun
  5. pen guns
  6. pen in
  7. pen licence
  8. pen licences
  9. Pen Mill
  10. pen name
  11. pen names

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pen in (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.

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