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Pencil vs Crayon - What's the difference?

pencil | crayon |

As nouns the difference between pencil and crayon

is that pencil is a paintbrush while crayon is a stick of colored chalk or wax used for drawing.

As verbs the difference between pencil and crayon

is that pencil is to write something using a pencil while crayon is to draw with a crayon.

pencil

English

(wikipedia pencil)

Noun

(en noun)
  • (obsolete) A paintbrush.
  • * 1590 , (Edmund Spenser), The Faerie Queene , III.0:
  • But living art may not least part expresse, / Nor life-resembling pencill it can paynt.
  • *, II.17:
  • *:why is it not lawfull for every man to pourtray himself with his pen, as it was for him to doe it with a pensell ?
  • Writing utensil that uses graphite (commonly referred to as lead). Regular pencils usually have a graphite shaft surrounded by wood. Also available in a mechanical version where the graphite length can be adjusted and sharpening is not needed.
  • (geometry) A family of geometric objects with a common property, such as the set of lines that pass through a given point in a projective plane.
  • (optics) An aggregate or collection of rays of light, especially when diverging from, or converging to, a point.
  • * 1863 , The Civil Engineer and Architect's Journal
  • When, by the pencil becoming oblique to the surface, the vergency produced on the pencil becomes changed, the primary and secondary focal points, V and H, separate
  • (medicine, archaic) A small medicated bougie.
  • Derived terms

    * carpenter's pencil * china pencil * color pencil, colored pencil, coloring pencil * colour pencil, coloured pencil, colouring pencil * golf pencil * grease pencil * lead pencil * mechanical pencil * * pencil crayon * pencil lead * pencil pusher * pencil sharpener * pencil skirt * pencil stub * propelling pencil * wax pencil

    Verb

  • to write something using a pencil
  • I penciled''' (''BrEn:'' '''pencilled ) it in my notebook.

    Derived terms

    * pencil in

    crayon

    English

    (wikipedia crayon)

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A stick of colored chalk or wax used for drawing.
  • * Dryden
  • Let no day pass over you without giving some strokes of the pencil or the crayon .
  • (dated) A crayon drawing.
  • * 1885 , Littell's Living Age (volume 167, page 187)
  • But on the wall hung two fine crayons , representing Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette — pictures which she recognized as having hung in the corridor of the Tuileries — and in front of them were burning two candles on a species of rude altar.
  • (dated) A pencil of carbon used in producing electric light.
  • Verb

    (en verb)
  • To draw with a crayon.
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