Word.ws English Dictionary

pencil whipping

pencil whipping is the present participle and gerund of pencil whip.

Meaning of pencil whip

Verb

pencil whip (third-person singular simple present pencil whips, present participle pencil whipping, simple past and past participle pencil whipped)

  1. (idiomatic) To approve a document without actually knowing or reviewing what it is that is being approved.
  2. (idiomatic) To complete a form, record, or document without having performed the implied work or without supporting data or evidence.
    • Knowing the auditors were coming in just a week, we chose to pencil whip the quarterly inventory forms for the last year.

Questions about pencil whipping

What is pencil whipping the present participle and gerund of?
Pencil whipping is the present participle and gerund of pencil whip.

Words near pencil whipping in the dictionary

  1. pencil towers
  2. pencil tree
  3. pencil trees
  4. pencil whip
  5. pencil whipped
  6. pencil whipping
  7. pencil whips
  8. pencil-blue
  9. pencil-blues
  10. pencil-holder
  11. pencil-holders

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pencil whipping (page history and authors); pencil whip (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 whipping.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pencil_whipping. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.