pen

noun

1. An enclosure (enclosed area) used to contain domesticated animals, especially sheep or cattle.

   “There are two steers in the third pen.”

2. (slang)A penitentiary, i.e. a state or federal prison for convicted felons.

   “They caught him with a stolen horse, and he wound up in the pen again.”

3. The bullpen.

   “Two righties are up in the pen.”

4. A tool, originally made from a feather but now usually a small tubular instrument, containing ink used to write or make marks.

   “He took notes with a pen.”

   “another novel from the pen of everybody's fave thriller writer.”

   “Please use a pen, not a pencil, when filling out this form. Use black or blue ink only.”

5. (figuratively)A writer, or their style.

   “He has a sharp pen.”

   “those learned pens”

6. (colloquial)Marks of ink left by a pen.

   “He's unhappy because he got pen on his new shirt.”

7. A light pen.
8. The internal cartilage skeleton of a squid, shaped like a pen.

   “A pen is nothing more complex than a decalcified shell, so one mutation of the genes that controlled calcification could be all it took.”

9. (archaic, dialectal, poetic)A feather, especially one of the flight feathers of a bird, angel etc.

   “And eke the pennes, that did his pineons bynd, Were like mayne-yards, with flying canuas lynd, With which whenas him liſt the ayre to beat […]”

10. (poetic)A wing.

    “but feather'd soon and fledge They summed their pens, and soaring the air sublime”

11. A syringe-like device for injecting a dose of medication such as insulin or epinephrine. (See Injector pen.)

    “"I'm sure she had more than one EpiPen […]" "But she didn't have one when she got stung or she'd have used it." By all appearances, Mariah died in the woods, […] If she managed to grab the pen found under her leg from her bag or pocket, she never discharged it. But Crystal doesn't have these details. "Doesn't it make sense that she kept an extra pen in her cupboard, and one in her bag? The extra pen fell out, is all."”

12. (abbreviation, alt-of, ellipsis)Ellipsis of vapor pen (“electronic cigarette”).

    “a dab pen; a wax pen”

13. A female swan.
14. (slang)Penalty.

    “England won 3-1 on pens.”

15. (informal)Penetration.
16. (form-of, humorous, plural, uncountable)plural of pan
17. (abbreviation, alt-of, countable, uncountable)Abbreviation of polyethylene naphthalate.
18. (abbreviation, alt-of, countable, uncountable)Abbreviation of penalty (a scorecard score when a skater is penalized out of their skate).

verb

1. (transitive)To enclose in a pen.

   “Watching where shepherds pen their flocks at eve.”

2. (transitive)To write (an article, a book, etc.).

   “Prying open the crate, you discover a carefully wrapped, handwritten copy of one of Matriarch Dilinaga's treatises. It is unlikely she penned it herself, but the flowing brushwork and intricate watercolor illustrations clearly show the hand of a master scribe.”

   “His two most recent films are last year's Greyhound, a Hanks-penned World War Two thriller in which he plays a naval commander, and now News of the World, a Western set in the years immediately following the close of the US Civil War, directed by Paul Greengrass, which is premiering around the world on Netflix tomorrow.”

   “It was in this era, too, that author and Scotland the Brave songwriter Cliff Hanley penned The Glasgow Underground, a tongue-in-cheek love letter to the Subway in song.”

name

1. A diminutive of the female given name Penelope.

   “"Listen, Pen. We are here for the duration. You have to let her in a bit."”

2. The 68th sura (chapter) of the Qur'an.