Word.ws English Dictionary

pencil pusher

pencil pusher noun: one who does routine office work; someone involved mainly in paperwork.

Noun

pencil pusher (plural pencil pushers)

  1. (derogatory, informal, often) One who does routine office work; someone involved mainly in paperwork.
    • “[…] I don't have her creative genius or her version. I'm a numbers man, like my father. A pencil pusher, as Amanda said.” With no balls, he added silently.2012, Danielle Steel, The Sins of the Mother, Random House, →ISBN, page 285
    • The internal investigator for the Macon Police Department had the dour, lifeless personality of a career pencil pusher.2013, Karin Slaughter, Busted, Random House, →ISBN

Synonyms of pencil pusher

All synonyms of pencil pusher

Forms of pencil pusher

pluralpencil pushers
alternative formpencil-pusher

Origin of pencil pusher

US origin, 1881.

Questions about pencil pusher

What does pencil pusher mean?
Pencil pusher means one who does routine office work; someone involved mainly in paperwork.
What part of speech is pencil pusher?
Pencil pusher is a noun.
What is the plural of pencil pusher?
The plural of pencil pusher is pencil pushers.

Words near pencil pusher in the dictionary

  1. pencil pleats
  2. pencil pointer
  3. pencil pointers
  4. pencil pouch
  5. pencil pouches
  6. pencil pusher
  7. pencil pushers
  8. pencil pushing
  9. pencil sharpener
  10. pencil sharpeners
  11. pencil skirt

Source and license

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