as in to delete
to show (something written) to be no longer valid by drawing a cross over or a line through it
military censors blue-penciled any remarks that could possibly be deemed critical
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Recent Examples of blue-pencil
Before getting sunk by a turgid love story — the kind of cinematic dead zone Thalberg would have blue-penciled in the screenplay stage — The Last Tycoon provides a good sense of what a producer actually does.
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Thomas Doherty, HollywoodReporter, 20 Apr. 2025
Thomas Doherty, HollywoodReporter, 20 Apr. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for blue-pencil
Verb
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The post was deleted after her release.—
Emma Tucker,
CNN Money,
27 Feb. 2026
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Advertisement Despite their competence, the agents are by no means perfectly reliable—as Summer Yue, Meta’s director of AI alignment, discovered when her claw system almost deleted all of her emails.—
Tharin Pillay,
Time,
27 Feb. 2026
Verb
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Airlines around the world have been forced to cancel flights through multiple cities in the area, affecting thousands of global travelers.—
Karla Cripps,
CNN Money,
2 Mar. 2026
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Qatar Airways said flights to and from Doha had been canceled and didn’t provide an estimate for when service would resume.—
Matthew Ormseth,
Los Angeles Times,
2 Mar. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Blue-pencil.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/blue-pencil. Accessed 5 Mar. 2026.
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