LEANER • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Leaner

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/lˈinər/ Listen

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.

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Etymology of 'Leaner'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Leaner" Quotes from Famous Books

... in the character of these animals, was the utter scorn with which they treated all attempts to fatten them. In fact, the usual consequences of good feeding were almost inverted in their case; and although I might assert that they became leaner in proportion to what they received, yet I must confine myself to truth, by stating candidly that this was not the fact; that there was a certain state of fleshlessness to which they arrived, but ...

— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton

... and leaner than Dan, yet resembled him enough to deceive us at times. Tom was gray, too, and had crinkly ears, and many other honorable battle-scars. Tom was not quite so friendly as Dan; in fact he had more dignity. Still neither hound was ever demonstrative ...

— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey

... it on—and let the perruquier call the police. The knot was Gordian. And yet, desperately as Stingaree sought unravelment, he was at the same time subconsciously as deep in a study of a face so unfamiliar that at first he had scarcely known it for his own. It was far leaner than of old; it was no longer richly tanned; and the mouth called louder than ever for a mustache. The hair, what there was of it, seemed iron-gray. It had certainly receded at the temples. What a pity, while it ...

— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung

... neither," retorted Olly, nothing deterred by that gentleman's presence from a frank exposure of his sentiments. "He's too lean. He's leaner than any thing. He's just like the blade of my pocket-knife ...

— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield

... toward the east showed merely as opaque patches set against a wall of thickening gloom, and the third deputy commissioner had started in at two-thirty and was not done yet. Sparse and bony, he crouched forward on the edge of his chair, with his lean head drawn down between his leaner shoulders and his stiff stubble of hair erect on his scalp, and he looked, perching there, like a broody but vigilant old crested cormorant upon a ...

— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

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