Unpen

verb

verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To release (from a pen). transitive

    "Her supplies, a billy of tea and scraps of salt beef and damper (her dog got the beef), gave out the first day, though that was as nothing to her compared with the bleat of the penned sheep, for it was summer and droughty, and her dog could not unpen them."

Example

More examples

"Her supplies, a billy of tea and scraps of salt beef and damper (her dog got the beef), gave out the first day, though that was as nothing to her compared with the bleat of the penned sheep, for it was summer and droughty, and her dog could not unpen them."

Etymology

From un- + pen.

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