pen

UK/pɛn/US/pɛn/

nounA14 meanings Very common — you will meet it every day · #1,306 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: penned, pens, penning

A pen is the thin tube of ink you write with. The one clipped into a shirt pocket, the one on a chain at the bank counter, the blue one that dries up halfway through an exam.

The point of a pen, against a pencil, is that the ink stays: you cannot rub it out. Ballpoint, fountain pen, felt-tip, marker pen — all pens. To pen something is to write it, and it sounds old-fashioned and literary: she penned a short note before she left. Then there is a second pen with nothing to do with writing, a small fenced area for animals — a sheep pen, a pigpen — and from that comes the verb to pen animals in, and the feeling of being penned in yourself when a room is too small.

Definitions of pen

1nounpenA hand-held instrument that writes with ink.A1~88%
“He borrowed a pen from the woman behind him and signed the form.”
2verbcomposeTo write something by hand, especially a letter or a piece of writing.B2~2%
“She penned a short apology and slid it under the door.”
synonyms: write, compose
3nounenclosureA small fenced area for keeping farm animals.B2~8%
“The lambs were moved into a pen beside the barn.”
synonyms: enclosure, fold
4verbconfineTo shut animals or people into a small enclosed space.B2~2%
“The cattle were penned in the corner of the field all night.”
synonyms: confine, coop up

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 12 sentences found in the wild and placed 12 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

pen is a writing tool.

Phrases it lives in

put pen to paper — start writing something down
the pen is mightier than the sword — writing and argument change more than force does

Where it comes from

The pen that holds animals goes back to Old English penn, an enclosure or fold, from Proto-Germanic *pennō, a pin, bolt or nail, and beyond that to a Proto-Indo-European word *bend- for a pointed peg or edge. It is family to pin, and the picture is the stakes driven into the ground to make the fence. Middle English penne kept it for animals. From about 1845 people began using pen for an enclosure holding people, and by 1884 it was being read as a short form of penitentiary.

Proto-Indo-European
*bend- — pointed peg, nail, edge
Proto-Germanic
*pennō
Old English
penn — enclosure, fold, pen
Middle English
pen
English, today
pen

Built from

penne · Middle English — enclosure for animals
*pannijō · Proto-Germanic — pin, bolt, nail, tack

+ (enclosure) From Middle English pen, penne (“enclosure for animals”), from Old English penn (“enclosure, fold, pen”), from Proto-Germanic pennō, pannijō (“pin, bolt, nail, tack”), from Proto-Indo-European bend- (“pointed peg, nail, edge”). Related to pin. Sense “prison” originally figurative extension to “enclosure for persons” (1845), later influenced by penitentiary (“prison”), being analyzed as an abbreviation (1884).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in School & Learning, A Man Called Ove, Farm & Countryside

First appears in chapter 2 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

pen in the wild

Quills were used for writing with ink before the invention of the dip pen/steel-nibbed pen, the fountain pen, and, eventually, the ballpoint pen.
Quill
A fountain pen is a writing instrument that uses a metal nib to apply water-based ink to paper.
Fountain pen
The pen draws ink from the reservoir through a feed to the nib and deposits the ink on paper via a combination of gravity and capillary action.
Fountain pen
A pen ( ) is a common writing instrument that applies ink to a surface, typically paper, for writing or drawing.
Pen
All of these modern pens contain internal ink reservoirs, such that they do not need to be dipped in ink while writing.
Pen

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the penne family

pen

pen — used about once every 136 pages · #1,306 · point at the bar for the others

Definitions of pen

1nounpenA hand-held instrument that writes with ink.A1~88%

“He borrowed a pen from the woman behind him and signed the form.”

2verbcomposeTo write something by hand, especially a letter or a piece of writing.B2~2%

“She penned a short apology and slid it under the door.”

synonyms: write, compose

3nounenclosureA small fenced area for keeping farm animals.B2~8%

“The lambs were moved into a pen beside the barn.”

synonyms: enclosure, fold

4verbconfineTo shut animals or people into a small enclosed space.B2~2%

“The cattle were penned in the corner of the field all night.”

synonyms: confine, coop up

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 12 sentences found in the wild and placed 12 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

pen is a writing tool.