lead pencil

(lĕd)

A pencil that uses graphite as its marking substance.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

lead pencil

a pencil in which the writing material is a thin stick of a graphite compound

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

lead′ pen′cil

(lɛd)
n.

a pencil made of graphite in a wooden or metal holder.

[1680–90]

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

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Noun

lead pencil - pencil that has graphite as the marking substance

pencil lead, lead - mixture of graphite with clay in different degrees of hardness; the marking substance in a pencil

pencil - a thin cylindrical pointed writing implement; a rod of marking substance encased in wood

Translations

lead pencil

[ˌlɛdˈpɛns/əl] n → matita con la mina di grafite

Collins Italian Dictionary 1st Edition © HarperCollins Publishers 1995

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When he returned, the message was written out in lead pencil:--

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It was of about the bigness of a lead pencil and thinking that it might be in the nature of a speaking tube I put my mouth to it and was about to call into it when a voice issued from it asking me whom I might be, where from, and the nature of my errand.

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He had seated himself on his painting-stool, and had taken a lead pencil in his hand, with which he was making strong marks to counteract the sense of tremulousness.

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George Willard, who had been sitting for an hour idly playing with a lead pencil, greeted him effusively.

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"And he sends me pieces of poetry he cuts out of the papers," Cecily went on, "with lots of the lines marked with a lead pencil. Yesterday he put one in his letter, and this is what he marked:

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The third support, placed at the apex of the triangle, was a lead pencil.

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Beyond the sea-wall there curves for miles in a vast and regular sweep the barren beach of shingle, with the village of Brenzett standing out darkly across the water, a spire in a clump of trees; and still further out the perpendicular column of a lighthouse, look- ing in the distance no bigger than a lead pencil, marks the vanishing-point of the land.

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In common with most governesses, she has a little dark down on her upper lip, and the April baby appeared one day at dinner with her own decorated in faithful imitation, having achieved it after much struggling, with the aid of a lead pencil and unbounded love.

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A curious collection, not of lead pencils, but of the lead out of lead pencils.

Perhaps there is a maddening drug made of lead pencils! Our shortest cut to the mystery is up the hill to the grave."

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One day when he was about twelve he found a number of lead pencils in a hitherto undiscovered drawer beneath the table, and in scratching upon the table top with one of them he was delighted to discover the black line it left behind it.

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Merely to do the writing of these records wears away five hundred and sixty thousand lead pencils. And merely to give these girls a cup of tea or coffee at noon, compels the Bell Company to buy yearly six thousand pounds of tea, seventeen thousand pounds of coffee, forty-eight thousand cans of condensed milk, and one hundred and forty barrels of sugar.