Word.ws English Dictionary

pens

/pɛnz/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

pin pen merger/pɪnz/

pens is the plural of pen.

pens is the plural of penny.

pens is the third-person singular simple present indicative of pen.

Meaning of pen

Noun (1)

pen (plural pens)

  1. An enclosure (enclosed area) used to contain domesticated animals, especially sheep or cattle.
    • There are two steers in the third pen.
  2. (slang) A penitentiary, i.e. a state or federal prison for convicted felons.
    • They caught him with a stolen horse, and he wound up in the pen again.
  3. The bullpen.
    • Two righties are up in the pen.

Noun (2)

pen (plural pens)

  1. A tool, originally made from a feather but now usually a small tubular instrument, containing ink used to write or make marks.
    • He took notes with a pen.
  2. (figuratively) A writer, or their style.
    • He has a sharp pen.
  3. (colloquial) Marks of ink left by a pen.
    • He's unhappy because he got pen on his new shirt.

See all 19 meanings of pen

Meaning of penny

Noun

penny (plural pennies or pence or (obsolete) pens)

  1. (historical) In the United Kingdom and Ireland and many other countries, a unit of currency worth ¹⁄₂₄₀ of a pound sterling or Irish pound before decimalisation, or a copper coin worth this amount. Abbreviation: d.
    • Thanks to that penny he had just spent so recklessly [on a newspaper] he would pass a happy hour, taken, for once, out of his anxious, despondent, miserable self. It irritated him shrewdly to know that these moments of respite from carking care would not be shared with his poor wife, with careworn...1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes, chapter I, in The Lodger, London: Methuen, →OCLC; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans...
  2. In the United Kingdom, a unit of currency worth ¹⁄₁₀₀ of a pound sterling, or a copper coin worth this amount. Abbreviation: p.
  3. (historical) In Ireland, a coin worth ¹⁄₁₀₀ of an Irish pound before the introduction of the euro. Abbreviation: p.
  4. In the US and (formerly) Canada, a one-cent coin, worth ¹⁄₁₀₀ of a dollar. Abbreviation: ¢.
    • Holy shit! A hundred and eleven pennies! At that point, that dog had more Lincoln in him than Mary Todd.2015 November 22, “Pennies”, in Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, season 3, episode 35, John Oliver (actor), via HBO
    Synonyms:
    cent
  5. In various countries, a small-denomination copper or brass coin.
  6. A unit of nail size, said to be either the cost per 100 nails, or the number of nails per penny. Abbreviation: d.

See all 15 meanings of penny

Proper noun capitalized: Pens

the Pens pl (plural only)

  1. (abbreviation, plural, plural-only) Abbreviation of Pittsburgh Penguins.

Phrases with pens

39 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with pens

6 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about pens

What is pens the plural of?
Pens is the plural of pen.
What part of speech is pens?
Pens is a proper noun.
How do you pronounce pens?
Pens is pronounced /pɛnz/.

Words near pens in the dictionary

  1. penroseite
  2. Penrosian
  3. Penruddock
  4. Penry
  5. Penryn
  6. pens
  7. pens in
  8. pens up
  9. Pensacola
  10. Pensacolan
  11. Pensacolans

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pens (page history and authors); Pens (page history and authors); pen (page history and authors); penny (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:

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