Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A fenced enclosure for animals.
  • noun The animals kept in such an enclosure.
  • noun Any of various enclosures, such as a bullpen or playpen, used for a variety of purposes.
  • noun A repair dock for submarines.
  • transitive verb To confine in or as if in a pen. synonym: enclose.
  • noun A female swan.
  • noun A penitentiary; a prison.
  • noun An instrument for writing or drawing with ink or similar fluid, especially.
  • noun A ballpoint pen.
  • noun A fountain pen.
  • noun A pen point.
  • noun A penholder and its pen point.
  • noun A quill.
  • noun An instrument for writing regarded as a means of expression.
  • noun A writer or an author.
  • noun A style of writing.
  • noun Archaic Pinions.
  • noun The chitinous internal shell of a squid.
  • noun A pen shell.
  • transitive verb To write or compose.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A feather, especially a large feather, of the wing or tail; a quill.
  • noun A quill, as of a goose or other large bird, cut to a point and split at the nib, used for writing; now, by extension, any instrument (usually of steel, gold, or other metal) of similar form, used for writing by means of a fluid ink.
  • noun One who uses a pen; a writer; a penman.
  • noun Style or quality of writing.
  • noun 5. A pipe; a conduit.
  • noun A female swan, the male being called a cob. Yarrell, British Birds.
  • noun In Cephalopoda, an internal homogeneous corneous or chitinous structure replacing the internal shell in certain decacerous cephalopods, such as the typical squids (Loliginidæ): also called gladius and calamary: distinguished from the corresponding sepiost or cuttlebone of the cuttles. See cut under calamary.
  • noun A pen or pencil used to record the various degrees of pressure employed in writing. A metal spring, which holds the writing point of metal or graphite, plays against a rubber air-capsule contained in the penholder and connected by rubber tubing to the ordinary recording apparatus.
  • noun An abbreviation of peninsula.
  • To shut, inclose, or confine in or as in a pen or other narrow place; hem in; coop up; confine or restrain within very narrow limits: frequently with up.
  • noun A small inclosure, as for cows, sheep, fowls, etc.; a fold; a sty; a coop.
  • noun Any inclousure resembling a fold or pen for animals.
  • noun In the fisheries, a movable receptacle on board ship where fish are put to be iced, etc.
  • noun A small country house in the mountains of Jamaica.
  • noun A weir or dam for penning up the water in a stream, canal, or river of any kind, to form a head.
  • To write; compose and commit to paper.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun obsolete A feather.
  • noun obsolete A wing.
  • noun An instrument used for writing with ink, formerly made of a reed, or of the quill of a goose or other bird, but now also of other materials, as of steel, gold, etc. Also, originally, a stylus or other instrument for scratching or graving.
  • noun Fig.: A writer, or his style.
  • noun (Zoöl.) The internal shell of a squid.
  • noun (Zoöl.), Prov. Eng. A female swan; -- contrasted with cob, the male swan.
  • noun See Bow-pen.
  • noun a pen for drawing dotted lines.
  • noun a pen for ruling lines having a pair of blades between which the ink is contained.
  • noun See under Fountain, and Geometric.
  • noun a pen having five points for drawing the five lines of the staff.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old English penn.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Origin unknown.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Short for penitentiary.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English penne, from Old French, from Late Latin penna, from Latin, feather; see pet- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Origin uncertain.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English penne ("enclosure for animals"), from Old English penn ("enclosure, fold, pen") (in compounds), from Proto-Germanic *pennō, *pannijō (“pin, bolt, nail, tack”), from Proto-Indo-European *bend- (“pointed peg, nail, edge”). Akin to Old English pennian ("to close, lock, bolt") (in compounds onpennian ("to open")), Low German pennen ("to secure a door with a bolt"), Old English pinn ("peg, bolt"). More at pin.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Shortned form of penalty

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