Word.ws English Dictionary

power of the pencil

power of the pencil noun: the authority to charge a punter's gambling or other bills to the casino.

Noun

power of the pencil

  1. (idiomatic) The authority to charge a punter's gambling or other bills to the casino.
    • In the casino business, they call it the power of the pencil. As casino host I had the ability to sign away a guest's restaurant tabs, wipe out all room or suite charges, give away almost any casino and hotel bills.2008, Barry Sinkow, The Count $ in Monte Carlo: An Insider's Look at Casino Life, page 182
    • Mafia pit bosses had the 'power of the pencil' to hand out free rooms, food and beverages at their discretion, […]2012, Time Out Las Vegas, page 24

Questions about power of the pencil

What does power of the pencil mean?
Power of the pencil means the authority to charge a punter's gambling or other bills to the casino.
What part of speech is power of the pencil?
Power of the pencil is a noun.

Words near power of the pencil in the dictionary

  1. power noise
  2. power of appointment
  3. power of attorney
  4. power of suggestion
  5. power of termination
  6. power of the pencil
  7. power of the purse
  8. power of yet
  9. power off
  10. power on
  11. power outage

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: power of the pencil (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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