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say it: STEN-sil
stencil is a noun and verb meaning "a sheet of material (metal, plastic, cardboard, waxed paper, silk, etc.) that has been perforated with a pattern (printing or a design); ink or paint can pass through the perforations to create the printed pattern on the surface below". It is pronounced /ˈstɛnsɪl/ — STEN-sil. It carries 2 recorded senses.
a sheet of material (metal, plastic, cardboard, waxed paper, silk, etc.) that has been perforated with a pattern (printing or a design); ink or paint can pass through the perforations to create the printed pattern on the surface below
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for stencil come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.