Pen-pusher

noun, slang

noun, slang ·Uncommon ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A person who performs routine office work, involving mainly paperwork. derogatory, informal, often

    "A pen-pusher in a Sixth ave. office said a coal miner is paid well. I asked him if he ever dug coal. Oh no!"

Synonyms

All synonyms
bureaucratpencil pusher

Example

More examples

"A pen-pusher in a Sixth ave. office said a coal miner is paid well. I asked him if he ever dug coal. Oh no!"

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.