pencil
/ˈpɛnsəl/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.95 in modern English
10
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
2
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A writing utensil with a graphite (commonly referred to as lead) shaft, usually blended with clay, clad in wood, and sharpened to a taper.
noun
An aggregate or collection of rays of light, especially when diverging from, or converging to, a point.
noun
A family of geometric objects with a common property, such as the set of lines that pass through a given point in a projective plane.
noun
A paintbrush.
noun
Example Sentences
- "[T]hey all ran off into the night to the miser’s ruined castle, with its solitary pencil of light in its high turret chamber[.]"
- "When, by the pencil becoming oblique to the surface, the vergency produced on the pencil becomes changed, the primary and secondary focal points, V and H, separate […]"
- "A drillable robot is capable of placing its end link in any orientation in the pencil of planes containing its first link."
- "Let l and m be two hyperparallel lines. All the transversals to l and m that form congruent corresponding angles with l and m lie in a pencil."
- "But living art may not least part expresse, / Nor life-resembling pencill it can paynt[…]."
- "why is it not lawfull for every man to pourtray himself with his pen, as it was for him to doe it with a pensell?"
Etymology
From Anglo-Norman and Old French pincil (see the variant pincel, which gave rise to Modern French pinceau (“paintbrush”)), from Latin pēnicillum, diminutive of pēniculus (“brush”), itself a diminutive of pēnis (“tail; penis”). Doublet of penis. Not related to pen.
Origin
- Source language: Old French
Word Breakdown
- Root: -, pincil, pēnicillum
Regional Pronunciation
- British English: /ˈpɛnsɪl/