1910, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World, The modern man will wave a cigarette instead of a stick; he will cut his pencil with a little screwing pencil-sharpener instead of a knife; and he will even boldly offer to be warmed by hot water pipes instead of a fire. I have my doubts about pencil-sharpeners even for sharpening pencils; and about hot water pipes even for heat.
1969, William Trevor, w, ‘Mr Sinnott, she has no use for another pencil-sharpener. When I was up with her breakfast I counted fourteen pencil-sharpeners.’
1969, Pascal Covici, Jr., In Memoriam: John Steinbeck, And his editor and friend could never know in advance whether he was about to receive an outline for a new novel, play, or story, or a scheme for improving electric pencil-sharpeners.
