Word.ws English Dictionary

pencil out

pencil out verb: of an investment, to make sense financially or to be expected to generate the desired returns.

Verb

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

  1. Of an investment, to make sense financially or to be expected to generate the desired returns.
  2. To roughly calculate the expected returns of an investment.

Forms of pencil out

third-person singular presentpencils out
present participle USpenciling out
present participle UKpencilling out
past participle USpenciled out
past USpenciled out
past participle UKpencilled out
past UKpencilled out

Origin of pencil out

From pencil + out (possibly based on or influenced by work out), the idea being that rough calculations are temporarily written in pencil rather than permanently written in pen.

Questions about pencil out

What does pencil out mean?
Pencil out means of an investment, to make sense financially or to be expected to generate the desired returns.
What part of speech is pencil out?
Pencil out is a verb.
What is the past tense of pencil out?
The past tense of pencil out is penciled out.

Words near pencil out in the dictionary

  1. pencil moustaches
  2. pencil mustache
  3. pencil mustaches
  4. pencil neck
  5. pencil necks
  6. pencil out
  7. pencil parer
  8. pencil parers
  9. pencil pine
  10. pencil pines
  11. pencil pleat

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pencil out (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: “pencil out.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pencil_out. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.