Word.ws English Dictionary

pensum

pensum noun: a task or imposition set as a school punishment.

Noun

pensum (plural pensums)

  1. (dated) A task or imposition set as a school punishment.
    • You invent nothing, you think you are inventing, you think you are escaping, and all you do is stammer out your lesson, the remnants of a pensum one day got by heart and long forgotten, life without tears, as it wept.1955, Samuel Beckett, translated by Patrick Bowles, Molloy

Forms of pensum

pluralpensums

Origin of pensum

Borrowed from Latin pensum. Doublet of peso.

Questions about pensum

What does pensum mean?
Pensum means a task or imposition set as a school punishment.
What part of speech is pensum?
Pensum is a noun.
What is the plural of pensum?
The plural of pensum is pensums.

Words near pensum in the dictionary

  1. Penstone
  2. penstroke
  3. penstrokes
  4. penstyldensovirus
  5. penstyldensoviruses
  6. pensum
  7. pensums
  8. pensy
  9. Pensylvania
  10. pensée
  11. pensées

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pensum (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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