pencil
1
9.3
- noun
- /ˈpɛnsl/
- Specialized
- Like many other states, Florida has dumped ATM-like touch-screen voting machines in favor of old-fashioned paper ballots that voters mark with pencil and then feed into an optical scanner to register their selections.
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Watch on YouTubeI saw diadems and crowns, daisies and bees, ribbons, Robins and discs of snow, sprung effects and pencil light.
- I saw diadems and crowns, daisies and bees, ribbons, Robins and discs of snow, sprung effects and pencil light.
Examples
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In geometry class, the teacher used a pencil to demonstrate how lines converge at a point.
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Did not Talbot once call the photographic machine "the pencil of history"?
Fiction book (2002) -
But you really need to push yourself to, to get that line quality, to get those long pencil lines.
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The major materials are a pencil, paper, and access to an information resource such as a library.
Academic text (2008) -
My thin pencil of light swept the back of the house.
Fiction book (1994) -
Participants were instructed not to move on to the next item until the entire class had put their pens or pencils down.
Academic text (2008) -
Again he rotated the pencil clockwise until it paralleled the triangle's left side.
Fiction book (2001) -
We clamber over, under, and around black boulders the size of small cars, our way lighted by pencil-thin shafts of sunlight
Academic text (2008) -
To create the optical illusion, she drew a pencil line from the center of the page outward.
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The architect sketched the blueprint with a pencil to ensure precision in the angles and lines.
Compounds
- Specialized
A small paint brush with very soft hairs for painting fine details
- Specialized
An evergreen tree, like the eastern red cedar, whose wood is used to make pencils
- Archaic
A thin stick of soft stone that people use to write on a slate in old classrooms
Surface Forms
Etymology
Pencil comes from the Latin penicillus, 'little tail', which named a small brush; by image, a 'pencil' of lines or rays is like a small bunch or brush of lines coming from one point. So a geometric or optical pencil is a group of lines that meet or spread from a single spot.