pencil-sharpener

plural pencil-sharpeners

1. alternativeAlternative form of pencil sharpener.

   ‘Mr Sinnott, she has no use for another pencil-sharpener. When I was up with her breakfast I counted fourteen pencil-sharpeners.’

   1969, William Trevor, Mrs Eckdorf in O’Neill’s Hotel, London: The Bodley Head, page 80

   2 more examples

   The modern man will wave a cigarette instead of a stick; he will cut his pencil with a little screwing pencil-sharpener instead of a knife; and he will even boldly offer to be warmed by hot water pipes instead of a fire. I have my doubts about pencil-sharpeners even for sharpening pencils; and about hot water pipes even for heat.

   1910, Gilbert K[eith] Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World, New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead and Company, pages 147–148

   And his editor and friend could never know in advance whether he was about to receive an outline for a new novel, play, or story, or a scheme for improving electric pencil-sharpeners.

   1969 spring, Pascal Covici, Jr., “In Memoriam: John Steinbeck”, in Steinbeck Newsletter, volume II, number 1, page 18