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.
Jump To:
-
blue-pencil
-
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
But recently the Army has stretched the pretext of "security" to blue-pencil information critical of the Army.
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
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
Good and true writing no magazine or newspaper editor will blue-pencil.
From The Last Harvest by John Burroughs
He was scheduled to host the program this Saturday, timed to the premiere of “Bupkis” — which also has Lorne Michaels as a producer — but the writers strike put a blue pencil through it.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 3, 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
Ian McEwan, who has just published a very short new book, The Children Act, has said that "very few really long novels earn their length", and "my fingers are always twitching for a blue pencil".
From The Guardian ● Sep. 2, 2014
She gave the green pencil and one can label to Poppy, and she herself took the blue pencil and smoothed out the other can label on the table.
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
General Thomas White, who retired last June as Air Force Chief of Staff, agreed with Lemnitzer and showed no resentment at being blue-penciled by subordinates.
From Time Magazine Archive
Amateur censors, hurriedly recruited from the civil service, stood watch at all the wire services and most big daily newspapers, heavily blue-penciled many a story.
From Time Magazine Archive
Opening the Rochester "News-Intelligencer" which Slade had sent him, his glittering eyes seemed to sparkle joy as a blue-penciled column met his gaze.
From The Air Trust by George Allan England
As a novelist, Jack — and Begley, by extension — could have benefited from a blue-penciling editor.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 3, 2016
The censor himself made up for his deficiency in English by blue-penciling everything he could not understand.
From Time Magazine Archive
Although blue-penciling has eased in recent years, English playwrights have persistently demanded total dramatic freedom, and last July Parliament abolished the Chamberlain's licensing authority.
From Time Magazine Archive
Lait's maiden column, sent to the Chief on approval, came back with minor blue-penciling and a marginal note: "Let's be amusing, but not vicious."
From Time Magazine Archive
Opposite them, at his brilliantly lighted window desk, sat McGuire Ellis, in full view of the crowd below, conscientiously blue-penciling telegraph copy.
From The Clarion by William Dodge Stevens
But the reporter has struck, because I blue-pencilled his notes.
From The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted by Katharine Ellis Barrett
With the most cheerful complacency the military authorities blue-pencilled their despatches to their governments.
From With the Allies by Richard Harding Davis
Easleby bought a copy of this issue as soon as he and Starmidge returned to town, and carefully blue-pencilled the cross-headed columns and the staring capitals above them.
From The Chestermarke Instinct by J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
