pencil pusher

noun

Informal.

1. a person, as a clerk or bookkeeper, whose work involves a considerable amount of writing, record-keeping, etc.

Word History and Origins

Origin of pencil pusher¹

An Americanism dating back to 1880–85

Example Sentences

“I’m a pencil pusher,” he told us, stretching out the cup of pencils in his hand in front of him again, like that would make it make more sense.

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The hiring is mostly focused on pencil pushers, and even the increased enforcement is focused on the richest Americans.

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Villanelle, an elegant assassin excelled in her profession by being invisible; Eve's invisibility as a pencil pusher at MI5 made it easy for her peers to ignore her.

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She once again began at an entry-level position, as a “pencil pusher,” she said, before slowly carving out an expertise in Arab-Israeli relations.

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“I was the pencil pusher, doing a lot of research. My state of the art tools were a slide rule and a Frieden computer. We were taking the theoretical and making it real.”

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