Pen vs Quill - What's the difference?

As nouns the difference between pen and quill

is that pen is an enclosed area used to contain domesticated animals, especially sheep or cattle while quill is the lower shaft of a feather, specifically the region lacking barbs.

As verbs the difference between pen and quill

is that pen is to enclose in a pen while quill is to pierce or be pierced with quills.

As a proper noun Quill is

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pen

English

(wikipedia pen)

Etymology 1

From (etyl) . More at pin. Sense “prison” originally figurative extension to enclosure for persons (1845), later influenced by

Noun

(en noun)

An enclosed area used to contain domesticated animals, especially sheep or cattle.

There are two steers in the third pen .

A place to confine a person; a prison cell.

They caught him with a stolen horse, and he wound up in the pen again.

(baseball) The bullpen.

Two righties are up in the pen .

Verb

To enclose in a pen.

* Milton

Watching where shepherds pen their flocks at eve.

Etymology 2

From (etyl) (m), from (etyl) (m), from (etyl) (Modern English (m)); note the /p/ ? /f/ Germanic sound change. See feather and for more.

Noun

(en noun)

A tool, originally made from a feather but now usually a small tubular instrument, containing ink used to write or make marks.

He took notes with a pen .

(figurative) A writer, or his style.

He has a sharp pen .

* Fuller

those learned pens

A light pen.

(zoology) The internal cartilage skeleton of a squid, shaped like a pen.

A feather, especially one of the flight feathers of a bird, angel etc.

* 1590 , Edmund Spendser, The Faerie Queene , I.xi:

And eke the pennes , that did his pineons bynd, / Were like mayne-yards, with flying canuas lynd, / With which whenas him list the ayre to beat

(poetic) A wing.

(Milton)

Derived terms

* ball pen * ball-point pen * border pen * bull pen * cartridge pen * felt-tip pen * fountain pen * goose pen * lettering pen * pen cancellation * pen feather * pen-mate * penmanship * pen name * pen pal * pen-pusher * poison pen * you don't dip your pen in company ink

Verb

(penn)

To write (an article, a book, etc.).

Etymology 3

Origin uncertain.

Noun

(en noun)

A female swan.

Etymology 4

Shortned form of penalty

Noun

(en noun)

penalty

References

Anagrams

* English three-letter words 1000 English basic words ----

quill

English

Noun

(en noun)

The lower shaft of a feather, specifically the region lacking barbs.

A pen made from a feather.

(figuratively) Any pen.Oxford English Dictionary , 2nd ed., 1989.

He picked up his quill and wrote a poem.

A sharply pointed, barbed, and easily detached needle-like structure that grows on the skin of a porcupine or hedgehog as a defense against predators.

A thin piece of bark, especially of cinnamon or cinchona, curled up into a tube.

The pen of a squid.

(music) The plectrum with which musicians strike the strings of certain instruments.

(music) The tube of a musical instrument.

* Milton

He touched the tender stops of various quills .

Something having the form of a quill, such as the fold or plain of a ruff, or (weaving) a spindle, or spool, upon which the thread for the woof is wound in a shuttle.

Verb

(en verb)

To pierce or be pierced with quills.

* 1966 , David Francis Costello, The World of the Porcupine , J. B. Lippincott & Company, page 66:

Coyotes, bears, and mountain lions which occasionally kill porcupines are sometimes quilled .

* 2010 , Mark Parman, A Grouse Hunter's Almanac: The Other Kind of Hunting , University of Wisconsin Press, ISBN 978-0-299-24920-5, page 49:

Then one of my dogs got quilled , and it happened again a month later. After putting the dog in a headlock, yanking out several dozen quills, and spurting blood all over myself and the decking of the back porch, I at least understood his antiporcupine venom.

(figuratively) To write.

* 1939 , , Finnegans Wake , page 182:

Nibs never would have quilled a seriph to sheepskin.

* 1976 , , Investigative Poetry , City Lights (1976), page 11:

One has only to recall that Coleridge and Wordsworth one day were lounging by the sea shore, while nearby sat an English police agent on snitch patrol prepared to rush to headquarters to quill a report about the conversation.

To form fabric into small, rounded folds.

To decorate with quillwork.

* 2007 , David J. Wishart, Encyclopedia of the Great Plains Indians , University of Nebraska Press (2007), ISBN 0-8032-9862-5, page 32:

Another characteristic of Plains Indians was the fairly strict division between art made and used by men and art made and used by women. Although men and women sometimes cooperated, women usually painted or quilled very balanced, controlled geometric designs on dresses, moccasins, robes, bags, and containers.

References

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