"pen picture" meaning in English

See pen picture in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

IPA: /ˈpɛn ˌpɪk(t)ʃə/ [Received-Pronunciation], /ˈpɛn ˌpɪk(t)ʃəɹ/ [Received-Pronunciation] Audio: En-au-pen picture.ogg [Australia] Forms: pen pictures [plural]
Etymology: From pen + picture. Etymology templates: {{root|en|ine-pro|*peth₂-|*peyḱ-|id2=mark}}, {{compound|en|pen|picture|notext=1|type=exocentric}} pen + picture Head templates: {{en-noun}} pen picture (plural pen pictures)
  1. A written description, often biographical. Tags: idiomatic Categories (topical): Writing Synonyms: pen portrait, sketch Translations (written description, often biographical): kuvaus (Finnish), luonteenkuvaus (Finnish)
    Sense id: en-pen_picture-en-noun-VVm0467U Disambiguation of Writing: 81 19 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English entries with language name categories using raw markup, English entries with topic categories using raw markup, English exocentric compounds, English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 60 40 Disambiguation of English entries with language name categories using raw markup: 78 22 Disambiguation of English entries with topic categories using raw markup: 74 26 Disambiguation of English exocentric compounds: 69 31 Disambiguation of English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys: 71 29 Disambiguation of 'written description, often biographical': 97 3
  2. (art, archaic) A picture drawn with a pen. Tags: archaic, idiomatic Categories (topical): Artistic works Synonyms: pen portrait, pen-picture Translations (picture drawn with a pen): lyijykynäpiirros (Finnish)
    Sense id: en-pen_picture-en-noun-sButZ2pX Topics: art, arts Disambiguation of 'picture drawn with a pen': 3 97

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for pen picture meaning in English (6.8kB)

{
  "etymology_templates": [
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      "expansion": "",
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    {
      "args": {
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        "2": "pen",
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      "expansion": "pen + picture",
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  "etymology_text": "From pen + picture.",
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  "head_templates": [
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
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      "categories": [
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          "_dis": "60 40",
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          "ref": "1842 April 30, “Six Nights with the Washingtonians: A Series of Original Temperance Tales. New York: Curry & Co., 155 Broadway [book review]”, in Brother Jonathan, volume II, number 1, New York, N.Y.: Wilson and Company, →OCLC, page 17, column 2",
          "text": "Mr. [Timothy Shay] Arthur has been, and is, a close observer, and in his pictures of domestic life, his groups include all the necessary characters, while the back ground and filling up take in all the accessories and incidentals, which, skilfully managed, give a pen-picture its vraisemblance.",
          "type": "quotation"
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        {
          "ref": "1863, J[ohn] Henry Hayward, “Editor’s Preface”, in J. Henry Hayward, editor, Poetical Pen-pictures of the War: Selected from Our Union Poets. […], New York, N.Y.: [J. Henry Hayward] […], →OCLC, page iv",
          "text": "[O]ur purpose […] was to secure a series of Pen Pictures, descriptive,—not of the most important events of the War, for that would be simply metrical history,—but of those events which have relation to the individual, that each and every particular poem might come home to some heart, and there find its abiding place throughg all time; […]",
          "type": "quotation"
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        {
          "ref": "1893, Edwin H. Porter, “Lizzie A. Borden Indicted”, in The Fall River Tragedy. A History of the Borden Murders. […], Fall River, Mass.: Geo[rge] R. H. Buffinton; press of J. D. Monroe, →OCLC, page 142",
          "text": "An afternoon newspaper published in Worcester, Mass., inflected upon its readers a screed worthy the ablest efforts of a Chicago anarchist. […] It drew a pen picture of the dread disease [cholera] in the act of purging the city of Fall River of such men as would dare to insinuate that the young woman [Lizzie Borden] was guilty.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1942 November–December, “What Our Readers Think”, in The Railway Magazine, London: Tothill Press, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 322",
          "text": "I was most amused by the article on Sir Henry Fowler in the series \"Some C.M.Es. I have Known.\" It was a perfect pen picture of one full of nervous energy.—Major H[ewitt] P[earson] M[ontague] Beames, […] (formerly Chief Mechanical Engineer, L.M.S.R.).",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1987, Chandrakant Mehta, “Chitradars Hano”, in Amaresh Datta, editor, Encyclopaedia of Indian Literature, volumes I (A–Devo), New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, →OCLC, page 726, column 2",
          "text": "In the poem, the poet just gives a pen picture of his father, who according to him, represents all that is best in Aryan culture.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2014, Jeremy Millar, Janine Bolger, “Working in the Life Space”, in Joyce Lishman, Janine Bolger, Neil Gibson, Gary Spolander, Chris Yuill, editors, Social Work: An Introduction, 3rd edition, London; Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE Publications, published 2023, part 3 (Models of Intervention), page 377",
          "text": "If ego development has been disrupted by adverse life events, and espec9ally an absence of nurturing during the formative years[…], we can expect this developmental weakness to be played out in a range of behaviours that cause society concern and often lead to the individual requiring specialist forms of care and support. […] Below is a pen picture of a child lacking ego integrity.",
          "type": "quotation"
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        {
          "word": "pen portrait"
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        {
          "word": "sketch"
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      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
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      "translations": [
        {
          "_dis1": "97 3",
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "written description, often biographical",
          "word": "kuvaus"
        },
        {
          "_dis1": "97 3",
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "written description, often biographical",
          "word": "luonteenkuvaus"
        }
      ]
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            "Culture",
            "Society",
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      "glosses": [
        "A picture drawn with a pen."
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        ],
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        "(art, archaic) A picture drawn with a pen."
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          "word": "pen portrait"
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          "_dis1": "22 78",
          "word": "pen-picture"
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        "archaic",
        "idiomatic"
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      "topics": [
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        "arts"
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      "translations": [
        {
          "_dis1": "3 97",
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "picture drawn with a pen",
          "word": "lyijykynäpiirros"
        }
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  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈpɛn ˌpɪk(t)ʃə/",
      "tags": [
        "Received-Pronunciation"
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    {
      "ipa": "/ˈpɛn ˌpɪk(t)ʃəɹ/",
      "tags": [
        "Received-Pronunciation"
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    },
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      "audio": "En-au-pen picture.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/9/94/En-au-pen_picture.ogg/En-au-pen_picture.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/En-au-pen_picture.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "pen picture"
}
{
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    "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
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    "English idioms",
    "English lemmas",
    "English multiword terms",
    "English noun-noun compound nouns",
    "English nouns",
    "English terms derived from Proto-Indo-European",
    "English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *peth₂-",
    "English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *peyḱ- (mark)",
    "English terms with IPA pronunciation",
    "English terms with audio links",
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      "name": "compound"
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  "etymology_text": "From pen + picture.",
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1842 April 30, “Six Nights with the Washingtonians: A Series of Original Temperance Tales. New York: Curry & Co., 155 Broadway [book review]”, in Brother Jonathan, volume II, number 1, New York, N.Y.: Wilson and Company, →OCLC, page 17, column 2",
          "text": "Mr. [Timothy Shay] Arthur has been, and is, a close observer, and in his pictures of domestic life, his groups include all the necessary characters, while the back ground and filling up take in all the accessories and incidentals, which, skilfully managed, give a pen-picture its vraisemblance.",
          "type": "quotation"
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        {
          "ref": "1863, J[ohn] Henry Hayward, “Editor’s Preface”, in J. Henry Hayward, editor, Poetical Pen-pictures of the War: Selected from Our Union Poets. […], New York, N.Y.: [J. Henry Hayward] […], →OCLC, page iv",
          "text": "[O]ur purpose […] was to secure a series of Pen Pictures, descriptive,—not of the most important events of the War, for that would be simply metrical history,—but of those events which have relation to the individual, that each and every particular poem might come home to some heart, and there find its abiding place throughg all time; […]",
          "type": "quotation"
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          "ref": "1893, Edwin H. Porter, “Lizzie A. Borden Indicted”, in The Fall River Tragedy. A History of the Borden Murders. […], Fall River, Mass.: Geo[rge] R. H. Buffinton; press of J. D. Monroe, →OCLC, page 142",
          "text": "An afternoon newspaper published in Worcester, Mass., inflected upon its readers a screed worthy the ablest efforts of a Chicago anarchist. […] It drew a pen picture of the dread disease [cholera] in the act of purging the city of Fall River of such men as would dare to insinuate that the young woman [Lizzie Borden] was guilty.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1942 November–December, “What Our Readers Think”, in The Railway Magazine, London: Tothill Press, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 322",
          "text": "I was most amused by the article on Sir Henry Fowler in the series \"Some C.M.Es. I have Known.\" It was a perfect pen picture of one full of nervous energy.—Major H[ewitt] P[earson] M[ontague] Beames, […] (formerly Chief Mechanical Engineer, L.M.S.R.).",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1987, Chandrakant Mehta, “Chitradars Hano”, in Amaresh Datta, editor, Encyclopaedia of Indian Literature, volumes I (A–Devo), New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, →OCLC, page 726, column 2",
          "text": "In the poem, the poet just gives a pen picture of his father, who according to him, represents all that is best in Aryan culture.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2014, Jeremy Millar, Janine Bolger, “Working in the Life Space”, in Joyce Lishman, Janine Bolger, Neil Gibson, Gary Spolander, Chris Yuill, editors, Social Work: An Introduction, 3rd edition, London; Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE Publications, published 2023, part 3 (Models of Intervention), page 377",
          "text": "If ego development has been disrupted by adverse life events, and espec9ally an absence of nurturing during the formative years[…], we can expect this developmental weakness to be played out in a range of behaviours that cause society concern and often lead to the individual requiring specialist forms of care and support. […] Below is a pen picture of a child lacking ego integrity.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
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          "word": "pen portrait"
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      "tags": [
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    {
      "categories": [
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        "en:Artistic works"
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      "glosses": [
        "A picture drawn with a pen."
      ],
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        ],
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        ],
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          "drawn",
          "draw#Verb"
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          "pen#Noun"
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(art, archaic) A picture drawn with a pen."
      ],
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          "word": "pen portrait"
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      "tags": [
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    {
      "ipa": "/ˈpɛn ˌpɪk(t)ʃəɹ/",
      "tags": [
        "Received-Pronunciation"
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      "audio": "En-au-pen picture.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/9/94/En-au-pen_picture.ogg/En-au-pen_picture.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/En-au-pen_picture.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
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  "synonyms": [
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      "word": "pen-picture"
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  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "written description, often biographical",
      "word": "kuvaus"
    },
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "written description, often biographical",
      "word": "luonteenkuvaus"
    },
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "picture drawn with a pen",
      "word": "lyijykynäpiirros"
    }
  ],
  "word": "pen picture"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.