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# stencil

«stencil» in Mova's school dictionary: **a thin sheet of card, plastic or metal with shapes or…** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 1 sentence of Mova's corpora that use it.

### part of speech

noun (a stencil, stencils); verb (stencil, stencils, stencilled, stencilling; US stenciled, stenciling)

### meaning for a pupil

1) A stencil is a thin sheet of card, plastic or metal with shapes or letters cut out of it; you paint or colour through the holes to copy the shapes onto a surface underneath. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/stencil/#m1)

2) To stencil is to make a pattern or letters this way. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/stencil/#m2)

3) A stencil can also be the picture made using it. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/stencil/#m3)

### sense in the lessons

In art lessons, pupils use stencils to print patterns, letters and shapes neatly; street artists like Banksy are famous for stencil art. In history, cave people made hand stencils by blowing paint around their hands on cave walls, some of the oldest art we know. In maths, shape stencils help draw neat polygons and circles.

### examples

- I used a star stencil to decorate my card. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/stencil/#x1)
- Hold the stencil still and dab paint over it. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/stencil/#x2)
- We stencilled our names on our school bags. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/stencil/#x3)
- Banksy is famous for stencil graffiti. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/stencil/#x4)
- Ancient hand stencils were found on cave walls. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/stencil/#x5)
- The road workers stencilled "SLOW" on the road. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/stencil/#x6)
- Use a shape stencil to draw a perfect hexagon. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/stencil/#x7)

### note

UK, Ireland, Australia, NZ: stencilled, stencilling (double l); USA: stenciled, stenciling. Countable noun: stencils. Not "stencel".

### In the corpora

- [Banksy is a British street artist whose name and face are kept secret; his stencils often joke about war, money and power.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/19-street-art-and-graffiti-legal-walls-vs-vandalism/9/)

### Trees and pragmatics

[Every meaning and example of «stencil» parsed by Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/stencil/), each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.