From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishstencilsten‧cil1 /ˈstensəl/ noun [countable] 1 AVPa piece of plastic, metal, or paper in which designs or letters have been cut out, that you put over a surface and paint over, so that the design is left on the surface2 a design made on something using a stencil
Examples from the Corpus
stencil• Two pieces of leather, glued together on three sides, and monogrammed with the aid of a stencil.• Electronic stencils produce photographic reproduction. 4.• For starters, our model is right-handed -- and so was the intricately cut plastic stencil.• Good quality stencils can produce several hundred copies per run, and, if stored carefully, can be reused. 2.• Correction of errors or alterations on the stencil are easily made by using special correcting fluid. 3.• This time she squeezed the paste on to the stencil in thin ribbons and smoothed it evenly over her left palm.• The stencils are sold to companies which use them to produce semiconductor chips.stencilstencil2 verb (stencilled, stencilling British English, stenciled, stenciling American English) [transitive] AVPto make a design, letters etc using a stencil→ See Verb tableExamples from the Corpus
stencil• Her footprint was stencilled across the thick hand-made paper.• The lead engine had a canvas dodger along its canopy, that was stencilled in crude letters: Look Out, Fritz!• It was stencilled in white paint on the freight car fourth from the front.• The name was stencilled inside a brass frame on the fourth door along.• If they are rather worse for wear you could always just paint and perhaps stencil them.Origin stencil2 (1700-1800) Old French estanceler “to decorate with shiny colors”, from estancele “spark”, from Latin scintilla; → SCINTILLA 