pen pal

noun

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.

pen pal

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

Word History and Origins

Origin of pen pal¹

An Americanism dating back to 1935–40

Example Sentences

The children have become pen pals with students at schools in Dedham, Massachusetts, to mark the occasion.

From BBC

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

From Los Angeles Times

It blossomed with her friends and umpteen pen pals and reached full flower at the Malibu Cinema, the movie theater that she and her husband operated for two decades in the heart of Malibu.

From Los Angeles Times

The teen pen pals live in their version of “Sleepless in Seattle” nearly missing each other in landmarks across the city.

From Salon

In a preprint posted recently to bioRxiv, Li and his team identify three of the brain’s pen pals in the insects.

From Science Magazine

Related Words

• letter writer www.thesaurus.com