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:
But recently the Army has stretched the pretext of "security" to blue-pencil information critical of the Army.
From Time Magazine Archive
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
"You blue-pencil out of my poor paragraphs everything that's interesting."
From The Dop Doctor by Richard Dehan
And it’s because, when you take a photograph or a scan, that blue pencil disappears.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 23, 2026
The lack of an editor’s blue pencil is not.
From New York Times ● Feb. 24, 2021
In a sense it’s an inversion of the writer-editor relationship in books, with Rowling wielding the blue pencil over the scriptwriter’s work.
From The Guardian ● Feb. 12, 2016
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
But I do see now why it was no accident that I later wound up as a sub-editor with a literal blue pencil.
From "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" by Author
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
Foe of book and stage censorship, in a city holding the record for censorship, the Transcript fought Prohibition, reported the Thaw case in "blunt, ugly words which pseudo-fastidious contemporaries mincingly blue-penciled."
From Time Magazine Archive
Since practically all Opposition papers in Italy have been suppressed, there were few pro-Matteotti articles to be blue-penciled by Fascist censors.
From Time Magazine Archive
After all, the remarks may not appear; I have the littlest editor that ever blue-penciled whatever he thought particularly dear to the writer.
From The Letters of Ambrose Bierce With a Memoir by George Sterling by Ambrose Bierce
As a novelist, Jack — and Begley, by extension — could have benefited from a blue-penciling editor.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 3, 2016
Due chiefly to subsequent pension legislation, he was unable last week to cut the estimate below $3,270,000,000 even after blue-penciling $100,000,000 worth of proposals.
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
"Why open with the fruit salad?" he asked, blue-penciling the menu.
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
Hastily he blue-pencilled his proofs, threw them into the wire basket, and hurried outdoors to seek the nearest tailor.
From Shandygaff by Christopher Morley
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
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
"I mean that I blue-pencilled that one myself."
From A Crooked Mile by Oliver [pseud.] Onions
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
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
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
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
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.
