pencil

Syllables: pen·cil/ˈpɛnsəl/UK/ˈpɛnsɪl/

pencil noun: a writing utensil with a graphite (commonly referred to as lead) shaft, usually blended with clay, clad in wood, and sharpened to a taper. Also the ellipsis of power of the pencil.

Image: Ole Palnatoke Andersen, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

pencil (plural pencils)

A writing utensil with a graphite (commonly referred to as lead) shaft, usually blended with clay, clad in wood, and sharpened to a taper.

Synonyms:

lead pencil
An aggregate or collection of rays of light, especially when diverging from, or converging to, a point.
- [T]hey all ran off into the night to the miser’s ruined castle, with its solitary pencil of light in its high turret chamber[.]1936, Norman Lindsay, The Flyaway Highway, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 64
A family of geometric objects with a common property, such as the set of lines that pass through a given point in a projective plane.
- When, by the pencil becoming oblique to the surface, the vergency produced on the pencil becomes changed, the primary and secondary focal points, V and H, separate […]1863, The Civil Engineer and Architect's Journal
- A drillable robot is capable of placing its end link in any orientation in the pencil of planes containing its first link.1987, R. E. Trahan, Applied Identification, Modelling and Simulation, page 107
(historical) A paintbrush.
- But living art may not least part expresse, / Nor life-resembling pencill it can paynt[…].1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Prologue”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, page 389
- why is it not lawfull for every man to pourtray himself with his pen, as it was for him to doe it with a pensell?1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 17, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC
(obsolete, rare) A small medicated bougie.
(obsolete) A small, thin tuft of hairs or feathers.
- It is almost entirely of a slatey colour, with yellow bill and feet, but the feathers of the rump and upper tail-coverts each terminate in a rigid, glossy pencil or tuft of a vivid crimson.1869, Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, volume I, London: Macmillan and Co., page 431

Verb

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

(transitive) To write (something) using a pencil.
- I penciled (BrE: pencilled) a brief reminder in my notebook.
- She had hardly got back when she encountered a piece by Robert Trewe in the new number of her favourite magazine, which must have been written almost immediately before her visit to Solentsea, for it contained the very couplet she had seen pencilled on the wallpaper by the bed, and Mrs. Hooper had...1888, Thomas Hardy, “An Imaginative Woman”, in Wessex Tales
(transitive) To mark with, or as if with, a pencil.
- It pencilled each flower with rich and variegated hues, and threw over its exuberant foliage a vesture of emerald green.1852, The Ark, and Odd Fellows' Western Magazine

Also used as

pencil is also the ellipsis of power of the pencil.

pencil meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

pencil in Hindi

graphite writing-instrument: अंकनी aṅknī, पेंसिल pensil

pencil in Tamil

graphite writing-instrument: எழுதுகோல் eḻutukōl

pencil in Marathi

graphite writing-instrument: पेन्सिल pensil

pencil in Urdu

graphite writing-instrument: پینْسِل pensil, پِنْسِل pinsil

More languagesFewer languages

pencil in Bengali: পেনসিল penśil, অঙ্কনী oṅkoni
pencil in Telugu: పెన్సిలు pensilu
pencil in Malayalam: പെൻസിൽ peṉsil
pencil in Kannada: ಪೆನ್ಸಿಲ್ pensil
pencil in Punjabi: ਪੈਨਸਿਲ painsil
pencil in Gujarati: સીસાપેન sīsāpen
pencil in Odia: ପେନ୍ସିଲ୍ pensil
pencil in Sinhala: පැන්සල pænsala
pencil in Assamese: কাঠ-পেঞ্চিল kath-peñsil, পেঞ্চিল peñsil
pencil in Nepali: सिसाकलम sisākalam
pencil in Pashto: پنسل pensel
pencil in Tagalog: lapis, pensil
pencil in Arabic: قَلَم رَصَاص qalam raṣāṣ, قَلَم qalam
pencil in Malay: pensel
pencil in Indonesian: pensil, potlot
pencil in Thai: ดินสอ din-sɔ̌ɔ
pencil in Vietnamese: bút chì, viết chì
pencil in Myanmar: ခဲတံ hkai:tam
Dhivehi: ފަންސުރު fan̊suru

Examples of pencil in a sentence

All the transversals to l and m that form congruent corresponding angles with l and m lie in a pencil.2012, G. E. Martin, The Foundations of Geometry and the Non-Euclidean Plane, page 357:
He requested three things of Sir Joshua Reynolds:—To forgive him thirty pounds which he had borrowed of him; to read the Bible; and never to use his pencil on a Sunday.1791, James Boswell, Life of Johnson, Oxford, published 2008, page 1390:

All 40 example sentences with pencil

Synonyms of pencil

lead pencil

Forms of pencil

Noun
plural	pencils
alternative form (obsolete)	pensill
Verb
third-person singular present	pencils
present participle US	penciling
present participle UK	pencilling
past participle US	penciled
past US	penciled
past participle UK	pencilled
past UK	pencilled

Plural of pencil: pencils

Origin of pencil

From Anglo-Norman and Old French pincil (see the variant pincel, which gave rise to Modern French pinceau (“paintbrush”)), from Latin pēnicillum, diminutive of pēniculus (“brush”), itself a diminutive of pēnis (“tail; penis”). Doublet of penis. Not related to pen.

Words formed from pencil

Phrases with pencil

51 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with pencil

Questions about pencil

What does pencil mean?: Pencil means a writing utensil with a graphite (commonly referred to as lead) shaft, usually blended with clay, clad in wood, and sharpened to a taper.
What is pencil in Hindi?: Pencil in Hindi is अंकनी (aṅknī), पेंसिल (pensil). See Pencil meaning in Hindi.
How do you use pencil in a sentence?: All the transversals to l and m that form congruent corresponding angles with l and m lie in a pencil.
What part of speech is pencil?: Pencil can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce pencil?: Pencil is pronounced /ˈpɛnsəl/.
What is the plural of pencil?: The plural of pencil is pencils.

Words near pencil in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: 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: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-pencil.ogg.

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