lead pencil
1
1.3
- noun
- /lɛd ˈpɛnsl/
:
lápiz
- Thus, some students had access to colored pencils or crayons, whereas others had only lead pencils.
- soft lead pencil
- black lead pencil
- No. 2 lead pencil
Examples
-
Allow students to use felt-tip pens or soft lead pencils that require less pressure or to use a computer to complete assignments.
Academic text (2004) -
The culprit was lead pencil marks placed on the timber by the carpenters when they measured the wood before sawing.
Blog text (15) -
Does anybody wanna buy a lead pencil?
-
"I eyed her but dropped my black lead pencil.
Academic text (1999) -
It also helps to use a hard lead pencil for your under drawing like this.
-
Inside, two lonely lead pencils roll through the otherwise empty drawer.
Fiction book (1994) -
OK, so I'm going to use a lead pencil to write something and I'm going to see if this eraser actually works.
-
The graphite in lead pencils is composed of multiple layers of graphene.
Blog text (13) -
In a capacious lounge chair with an ottoman, Qwilleran liked to read aloud to the Siamese or draft his column on a legal pad with a soft lead pencil.
Fiction book (2000) -
He sketched a beautiful landscape using a lead pencil and later added color with pastels.
Synonyms
17
1.0
A material made of graphite used for drawing or writing on paper
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound is fully compositional: 'lead' (the graphite core) + 'pencil' denotes a pencil containing that core, so a learner who knows both constituent meanings can infer the MWE. Although 'lead' can be ambiguous with the metal in other contexts, the provided sense clarifies the intended referent, and the noun-noun combination follows a straightforward, cross-linguistically common compounding pattern.
Etymology
Lead pencil comes from an old mistake: the dark stone used for writing looked like the metal lead, so people called it lead even though it was actually 'graphite'. So today, lead pencil means a pencil that uses 'graphite' to make marks, not real lead.