Definition of "pen"

Watching where shepherds pen their flocks at eve.

1667, John Milton, “Book IV”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], […]; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873,

those learned pensThe spelling has been modernized.

1655, Thomas Fuller, edited by James Nichols, The Church History of Britain, […], new edition, volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: […] [James Nichols] for Thomas Tegg and Son, […], published 1837

A pen is nothing more complex than a decalcified shell, so one mutation of the genes that controlled calcification could be all it took.

2017, Danna Staaf, Squid Empire, ForeEdge, page 117

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 […]

1590, Edmund Spenser, “(please specify the book)”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie

but feather'd soon and fledge They summed their pens, and soaring the air sublime

1667, John Milton, “(please specify the book number)”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], […]; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873,

"I'm sure she had more than one EpiPen […] " "But she didn't have one when she got stung or she'd have used it." By all appearances, Mariah died in the woods, […] If she managed to grab the pen found under her leg from her bag or pocket, she never discharged it. But Crystal doesn't have these details. "Doesn't it make sense that she kept an extra pen in her cupboard, and one in her bag? The extra pen fell out, is all."

2023 August 29, Geri Krotow, A Wasp in the Woods, Tule Publishing

Prying open the crate, you discover a carefully wrapped, handwritten copy of one of Matriarch Dilinaga's treatises. It is unlikely she penned it herself, but the flowing brushwork and intricate watercolor illustrations clearly show the hand of a master scribe.

2008, BioWare, Mass Effect, Redwood City: Electronic Arts, PC, scene: Nonuel

His two most recent films are last year's Greyhound, a Hanks-penned World War Two thriller in which he plays a naval commander, and now News of the World, a Western set in the years immediately following the close of the US Civil War, directed by Paul Greengrass, which is premiering around the world on Netflix tomorrow.

2021 February 9, Christina Newland, “Is Tom Hanks part of a dying breed of genuine movie stars?”, in BBC‎

It was in this era, too, that author and Scotland the Brave songwriter Cliff Hanley penned The Glasgow Underground, a tongue-in-cheek love letter to the Subway in song.

2021 December 29, Conrad Landin, “Glasgow Subway: a city institution”, in RAIL, number 947, page 45