1 (often in compounds) an instrument made of plastic or metal used for writing with ink:
pen and ink * (written) a new book from the pen of Martin Amis
seealsoBALLPOINTPEN, FELT-TIPPEN, FOUNTAINPEN
2 a small piece of land surrounded by a fence in which farm animals are kept:
a sheep pen
3 (AmE, slang) = PENITENTIARY
IDIOMS
put pen to paper to write or start to write sth
moreatSLIPn.
verb (-nn-) [VN]
1 (formal) to write sth:
He penned a letter to the local paper.
2 ~ sb/sth (in / up) to shut an animal or a person in a small space:
At clipping time sheep need to be penned. * The whole family were penned up in one room for a month.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for pen is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is pen a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, pen is tagged as noun.
Does pen appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — pen appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
