penes

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of penis.

   Researchers measured the penes of ducks from a dozen species.

   The veterinary textbook devotes a full chapter to the penes of farm animals and their common injuries.

   Note

   This is the learned plural, used mostly in scientific writing; everyday English says penises, and penii also turns up. Because penes sounds like a textbook, it can be put to comic use in plain prose: Kurt Vonnegut, in Cat's Cradle (1963), describes loincloths that did little to conceal penes like pendulums on grandfather clocks.

2. 2
   SayPEENZUS/pinz/UK/piːnz/

   noun

   Plural of pene.

   Note

   The hammer word sits behind this plural: pene is another spelling of peen, whose own plural is peens. Since the same letters spell the scientific plural of penis, readers will take that meaning first unless hammers or metalwork are plainly in view, which makes peens the safer choice.

3. 3
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of pene.

   Note

   Here the letters spell a verb: the present-tense form a singular subject takes, as in the smith penes the rivet flat. The main spelling would give peens. With two plural nouns sharing the form, the anatomical plural and the hammer-head plural, only the grammar of the sentence shows which word is meant.

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