blue-pencil
verb (used with object)
to alter, abridge, or cancel with or as with a pencil that has blue lead, as in editing a manuscript.
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blue-pencil
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blue pencil
blue pencilnoundeletion, alteration, or censorship of the contents of a book or other work
blue-pencil
American
[bloo-pen-suhl]
/ ˈbluˈpɛn səl /
verb (used with object)
blue-penciled,
blue-penciling,
blue-pencilled,
blue-pencilling
blue pencil
British
noun
verb
Etymology
Origin of blue-pencil
First recorded in 1885–90
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The thing I'd like to do if I ran a newspaper would be the telegraph editor and the blue-pencil man.
From Time Magazine Archive
He would "never go against the Weather Bureau," but once in a long while he does blue-pencil official forecasts that strike him as debatable.
From Time Magazine Archive
Glavlit, the Soviet censorship agency, combed some of the outgoing cables carefully, eliminating, among other things, mention of its own blue-pencil activity.
From Time Magazine Archive
But recently the Army has stretched the pretext of "security" to blue-pencil information critical of the Army.
From Time Magazine Archive
He demanded somebody who would blue-pencil the interesting sentences in the important letters.
From Public Opinion by Walter Lippmann
Gov. Gavin Newsom, however, hardly ever picks up his blue pencil.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 23, 2023
Tight ballpoint hatching over lightly applied blue pencil, in “Monongahelia River Falls near Riverside West Virginia,” vividly produces the effect of rushing water.
From New York Times ● Dec. 22, 2021
Go to “edit profile,” click the blue pencil next to the job you just lost, and you’ll have the opportunity to uncheck the “I currently work there” box, and to put in an end date.
From Forbes ● Sep. 8, 2014
Here's my choice of the novels that might weigh as much as a brick, but to which I'd never take a blue pencil.
From The Guardian ● Sep. 2, 2014
But this time she made it blue, since she was using her blue pencil.
From "The City of Ember" by Jeanne DuPrau
Evidently, he took so seriously Bill’s exhortations to eliminate clutter that he had his last name legally blue-penciled and is now simply Jeff Stuart.
From The New Yorker ● May 19, 2015
Pound blue-penciled the words “bowels” and “trousers” in one early chapter.
From The New Yorker ● Jun. 16, 2014
Most of such obvious examples of church baiting have now been blue-penciled away, often because they were singled out and criticized by Dr. Bernhard Olson, a Methodist who teaches at Union Theological Seminary.
From Time Magazine Archive
Regrettably, though, the sneaky trick ending remains the sort of hokum that good writers have blue-penciled since O. Henry's heyday.
From Time Magazine Archive
Pretentious solemnities of any kind were hard for him to tolerate and an opera season is, of course, stuffed with these, even a democratized blue-penciled out-of-doors affair like this.
From Mary Wollaston by Henry Kitchell Webster
As a novelist, Jack — and Begley, by extension — could have benefited from a blue-penciling editor.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 3, 2016
"Why open with the fruit salad?" he asked, blue-penciling the menu.
From Time Magazine Archive
Every two-minute sequence requires 14 hours of blue-penciling, often as many as 100 splices.
From Time Magazine Archive
Sir: We appreciate your restraint in not blue-penciling Phyllis McGinley's remarks about Bulwer-Lytton.
From Time Magazine Archive
For, seated on a stool behind the desk, haggard but vertical, was Senbot Drosmig, busily reading letters and blue-penciling comments on them with his feet.
From Helpfully Yours by Evelyn E. Smith
And one day, sitting alone in his office, a clerk brought him a morning paper with one column marked in a big blue-pencilled oval.
From The Younger Set by Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
Finally in looking over a skidway he noticed that one log had not been blue-pencilled across the end.
From Blazed Trail Stories and Stories of the Wild Life by Stewart Edward White
A few days later, Lashmar found on his breakfast table a copy of the Hollingford Express, blue-pencilled at an editorial paragraph which he read with interest.
From Our Friend the Charlatan by George Gissing
It was a copy of the King William County Clarion, and a paragraph in the advertising columns was heavily blue-pencilled.
From In Jeopardy by Van Tassel Sutphen
"I mean that I blue-pencilled that one myself."
From A Crooked Mile by Oliver [pseud.] Onions
Comedians will also submit their "gags" and comic scenes for blue-pencilling.
From Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 153, July 18, 1917 by Various
Some people just use the good old-fashioned method of printing out the text to be proofed, and blue-pencilling the mistakes.
From The Project Gutenberg FAQ 2002 by Jim Tinsley
The artist is a sort of impassioned proof-reader, blue-pencilling the lapsus calami of God.
From Damn! A Book of Calumny by H. L. (Henry Louis) Mencken
Robbins was looking over the morning Pic., detecting, as young reporters will, the gross blunders in the make-up, and the envious blue-pencilling his own stuff had received.
From Roads of Destiny by O. Henry
In rush seasons it will make use of publisher's description, after carefully blue-pencilling obtrusive adjectives, but it goes no farther.
From The Building of a Book A Series of Practical Articles Written by Experts in the Various Departments of Book Making and Distributing by Frederick H. Hitchcock
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
