penman

From pen +‎ -man.

penman (plural penmen)

1. A scribe, or a person who copies texts.
2. A person with writing skills; a journalist or other author.
   • 1693, [Robert South], chapter I, in Animadversions upon Dr. Sherlock’s Book, Entituled A Vindication of the Holy and Ever-blessed Trinity, &c. , London: Randal Taylor, , →OCLC, page 2:

     [T]he holy Pen-men of the Nevv Teſtament ſeem to have borrovv'd and apply'd it [the word mystery] to ſome of the Great and Arduous Truths of Chriſtianity, ſuch as human Reaſon cannot give a clear and explicit Account of.

   • 1845, B[enjamin] Disraeli, Sybil; or The Two Nations. , volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Henry Colburn, , →OCLC:

     Well, I often wish I were a penman; but I never could do it. I’ll read any day as long as you like, but that writing, I could never manage.

   • 1846 February 28 – 1847 February 27, W[illiam] M[akepeace] Thackeray, “On Literary Snobs”, in The Book of Snobs, London: Punch Office, , published 1848, →OCLC, page 60:

     You have a very bad opinion indeed of the present state of Literature and of literary men, if you fancy that any one of us would hesitate to stick a knife into his neighbour penman, if the latter's death could do the state any service.

   • 1871–1872, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter LXIV, in Middlemarch , volumes (please specify |volume=I to IV), Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book (please specify |book=I to VIII):

     But there had been total silence. The Captain evidently was not a great penman, and Rosamond reflected that the sisters might have been abroad.

3. (slang) A forger.
   • 1962, H. L. Mencken, The American Language, supplement 2, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, →OCLC, page 669:

     Forgers, counterfeiters (penmen) and other such intellectuals have a certain standing in the underworld and even pickpockets are respected more or less as the masters of a difficult art, but they do not rank with the princes of the big con […]

• penwoman

• penmanship

• Nepman, pan men, panmen