LEAN • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Lean

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/lin/ Listen

verb

Lean v. t. (past & past part. leant or leaned; pres. part. leaning) To conceal. (Obs.)

Lean v. t. (past & past part. leant or leaned; pres. part. leaning) To cause to lean; to incline; to support or rest. "His fainting limbs against an oak he leant."

Lean v. i. (past & past part. leant or leaned; pres. part. leaning)

To incline, deviate, or bend, from a vertical position; to be in a position thus inclining or deviating; as, she leaned out at the window; a leaning column. "He leant forward."

To incline in opinion or desire; to conform in conduct; with to, toward, etc. "They delight rather to lean to their old customs."

To rest or rely, for support, comfort, and the like; with on, upon, or against. "He leaned not on his fathers but himself."

adjective

Lean adj. (compar. leaner; superl. leanest)

Wanting flesh; destitute of or deficient in fat; slim; not plump; slender; meager; thin; lank; as, a lean body; a lean cattle.

Wanting fullness, richness, sufficiency, or productiveness; deficient in quality or contents; slender; scant; barren; bare; mean; used literally and figuratively; as, the lean harvest; a lean purse; a lean discourse; lean wages. "No lean wardrobe." "Their lean and flashy songs." "What the land is, whether it be fat or lean." "Out of my lean and low ability I'll lend you something."

(Typog.) Of a character which prevents the compositor from earning the usual wages; opposed to fat; as, lean copy, matter, or type.

Synonyms: slender; spare; thin; meager; lank; skinny; gaunt.

noun

Lean n.

That part of flesh which consists principally of muscle without the fat. "The fat was so white and the lean was so ruddy."

(Typog.) Unremunerative copy or work.

See images of 'Lean'

Etymology of 'Lean'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Lean" Quotes from Famous Books

... he kinder lean' up 'g'inst de school-teacher whut board at Unc' Silas Diggs's house, ...

— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough

... join the strain, M'Pherson, Fraser, and M'Lean; Through all your bounds let gladness reign, Both prince and patriot praising; Whose generous bounty richly pours The streams of plenty round your shores; To Scotia's hills their pride ...

— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... shrugged his huge shoulders in stolid resignation; but the wrinkled forehead of the older man became somewhat smoother. There was nothing Jotun-like about his long, lean features, yet his expression was little pleasanter on that account. From under his lowering shaggy brows he appeared to see without being seen; and one distrusted his hidden eyes as a traveller in the open distrusts a skulker in ...

— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... intellectual boy who unless mother looks after him will get indigestion or neurasthenia. Sometimes men pity their leaders. Meighen, with his intensity and his thought before action looks such a frail wisp of a man. The last time I saw him in public he was bare-headed on an open-air stage, a dusky, lean silhouette against a vast flare of water and sky. On the same spot less than two hundred years ago, that singular, overbuilt top head and sharply tapering, elongated oval of a face might have been that of ...

— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... slavery. He, however, vehemently asserted that a restriction of slavery was cruel to the slaves already held. While their numbers would be the same, it would so crowd them in narrow limits as to expose them "in the old, exhausted States to destitution, and even to lean and haggard starvation, instead of allowing them to share the fat plenty of the new West."(42) (What an argument in favor of perpetuating an immoral thing! So spread it over the world as to make it thin, ...

— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

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