pen pal

American  

noun

pen pals plural

1. a person with whom one keeps up an exchange of letters, usually someone so far away that a personal meeting is unlikely.

   My niece in Texas has a pen pal in France.

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pen pal British  

noun

1. Also called: pen friend.  a person with whom one regularly exchanges letters, often a person in another country whom one has not met

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• pen pals
  plural

Etymology

Origin of pen pal

An Americanism dating back to 1935–40

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

pen pal

“He’s just an incredibly loving soul,” said actor Debra Winger, a pen pal and close friend of Robbins’.

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 9, 2025

We've already had fans telling BBC Scotland about rooms being booked, flights lined up and favours being pulled in from that long-lost school pen pal offering a room in Dusseldorf.

From BBC ● Oct. 15, 2023

Sigrid shared similar experiences, offering that “your pen pal will change your perspective on life, and you will gain as much as they do from the correspondence.”

From Slate ● Sep. 12, 2023

In the song “I Don’t Know His Name,” Amalia concludes that her anonymous pen pal — even though he is, in fact, a co-worker she hates — must be an extremely kind and cultured man:

From New York Times ● Jun. 23, 2023

We rush down the hill toward the glade and the sycamore hollow to see if my pen pal has written the next chapter of our story.

From "How to Disappear Completely" by Ali Standish

Related Words

• letter writer