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Lean   Listen
noun
Lean  n.  
1.
That part of flesh which consists principally of muscle without the fat. "The fat was so white and the lean was so ruddy."
2.
(Typog.) Unremunerative copy or work.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Lean" Quotes from Famous Books



... come just when you did," he remarked solemnly, "I should have been devoured by sharks. Already I had noticed a black fin circling about the island—I mean a LEAN, black fin,—or is it a low, rakish, black fin? No; that's a craft,—a low, rakish, black craft. It was a ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson

... unaquainted with this fancy, independently determined that she was 'beautiful and delicate,' 'unoppressed by weight of flesh,' 'probably small,' but 'a tawny or brown blonde,' with grey eyes: and Brandes affirms that she was lean, slight, and hard. They know much more than Shakespeare, who tells us absolutely nothing on these subjects. That Lady Macbeth, after taking part in a murder, was so exhausted as to faint, will hardly demonstrate her fragility. That she must have been blue-eyed, fair, or ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... scarcity—or rather high prices, for there is really no scarcity of anything but meat—is felt by the cats, rats, etc., as well as by the people. I have not seen a rat or mouse for months, and lean cats are wandering past every day in quest ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... has but one voice; Five hundred stocks, like golden lovers, lean Their heads together, in their quiet way, And but one bird sings, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various

... some Tinguian left their little village in the valley early one morning and made their way toward the mountains. They were off on a deer hunt, [77] and each carried his spear and head-ax, while one held in leash a string of lean ...
— Philippine Folk Tales • Mabel Cook Cole

... she, suddenly turning toward him and taking both his hands in hers, "thou wilt not leave me again for so long a time; I have been sore lonely and oft have felt the need of thy sturdy arm on which to lean." ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley

... best this evening. You might have seen Mrs. Westlake abandon her attentive position, and lean back rather wearily; you might have seen a covert smile on a few of the more intelligent faces. It was awkward for Mutimer to be praising moderation in a movement directed against capital, and this was not exactly the audience for eulogies of Great Britain at the expense ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... Asher had just come home from two years of army service on the western plains. Few changes had come to the little community; but to the young man, who eight springtimes ago had gone out as a pink-cheeked drummer boy, the years had been full of changes. He was now twenty-three, straight as an Indian, lean and muscular as a veteran soldier. The fair, round cheeks of boyhood were brown and tinged with red-blooded health. There was something resolute and patient in the clear gray eyes, as if the mother's own far vision had crept into them. But the ready smile ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter

... waitin' for the preacher sharp, who's goin' in the stage, to get tucked in among the ladies, a hollow-chested, chalk-cheeked, sardonic-lookin', cynical-seemin' bandit, drivin' a lean-laigged hoss to one of them spid'ry things they calls a quill-wheel, comes pirootin' along over to one side of the fooneral cortege at a walk. He's p'intin' in from over Red Dog way, but I savvys from the wonderin' faces of them Red Dog sports that he's ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis

... through legislation rather than through the uprooting of an ancient and cherished constitution. Accordingly, it was not until the elections of 1804-6 that this question of a new constitution could reasonably be made a campaign issue. But from 1793 the dissenters began to lean towards affiliation with the Democratic-Republican [a] party, the successors to the Anti-Federal; yet it was not until toward the close of the War of 1812 that the Republican party made large gains in Connecticut and the dissenters ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.

... accompany me to Dunbar, by way of making a parade of me as a sweetheart of hers, among her relations. She mounts an old cart-horse, as huge and as lean as a house; a rusty old side-saddle without girth, or stirrup, but fastened on with an old pillion-girth—herself as fine as hands could make her, in cream-coloured riding clothes, hat and feather, &c.—I, ashamed of my situation, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... had already made it plain that General Quintard's creditors would have lean pickings at the Barony, intimating that he himself was the chiefest of these and the one to suffer most grievously in pocket. Further than this, Mr. Bladen saw that the old house was a ruin, scarcely habitable, and that the thin acres, though they were many and a royal grant, were ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester

... such as Minnie speaks about ever dawn in my heart? Will such a change as has beautified and softened her life with such a sweet and gracious influence, ever come near to touch mine? Minnie, my friend, you seek my aid to walk in the path you think I know so well, but it is I who should lean on you. I hold the scroll in my hand, but you have the guide in your heart." So thinking she turned wearily from the window and began ...
— Hollowmell - or, A Schoolgirl's Mission • E.R. Burden

... him alone. Never was sleep farther from him. The shifting firelight in its flickering play fell upon his face and revealed it in all its clear young boyish strength, the firm neck, the masterful chin, the calm, resolute eyes set wide apart, the lean big-boned fingers, ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler

... him, thinking there was no clue in that, when his glance rested upon the towering peaks of the Hermosa range, their western slopes soft in the violet shadows of the forenoon, their upreared crags seeming to lean against the very blue of the sky. A sudden memory from his own childish ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly

... was strong in 1994-97 and inflation was brought under control. In 1998, El Nino's impact on agriculture, the financial crisis in Asia, and instability in Brazilian markets undercut growth. And 1999 was another lean year for Peru, with the aftermath of El Nino and the Asian financial crisis working its way through the economy. Political instability resulting from the presidential election and FUJIMORI's subsequent departure from office limited growth in 2000. The downturn in the global economy ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... easily digested. The best quality will have clear, hard, white fat, and a good deal of it; the lean part will be juicy, firm and of a rather dark red color. When there is but little fat, and that is soft and yellow and the meat is coarse and stringy, you may be sure that the quality is poor. Mutton is much improved by being hung in a cool ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa

... globe alternately from one pole and from the other. In the south, a clump of ice-bound land, well within the Antarctic Circle, surrounds the pole. All else is a wide domain of ocean broken only where tapering and isolated tongues of land, South America, the Cape, Australia, lean down from the great land masses of the north. On the other hand, all the great land masses expand in the Northern Hemisphere, and shoulder one another round the North Pole. America is separated from Asia only by the shallowest ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell

... onset; for this she will require Occidental assistance, and in the turmoil of that direful conflict—or, let us hope, in order to avoid it—she will readily give up all designs against her western neighbors, and she may become really western by the necessities which impel her to lean ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... is a rather lean and long-necked gentleman, middle-aged and middle-sized, and usually troubled with a cold in the head. Mrs. Merrywinkle is a delicate-looking lady, with very light hair, and is exceedingly subject to the same unpleasant ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... He has an abundant crop of dark hair on his head, under his chin, and on his upper lip. He is not just now troubled with a superabundance of flesh, or, in other words, no one would suspect him of being fat. On the contrary, he might remind one of the lean kine, or the prodigal son who had been feeding on husks. He is wide awake at this late hour of the night, from which I conclude he has slept more or less during the day. No one, to look at this gentleman, would take him to be a remarkable man; in ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty

... in and out to keep them from slipping. Then a number of poles should be laid over them to prevent them from blowing away. In woods where there is plenty of bark available in large slabs, the bark lean-to is a quickly constructed and serviceable camp. The ridge pole is set up like that of the brush camp. Three or four other poles are laid slanting to the ground on one side only. The ends of these poles should be pushed into the earth and fastened with crotched sticks. Long poles are then ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... central room, 262 feet long, 98 feet wide, and 68 feet in height, with two lean-to annexes of 16 feet each, making the total width 100 feet. The structure is wholly of metal, and is so arranged as to permit of advantage being taken of every foot of space under cover. For this purpose the system of construction without tie-beams, known as the "De Dion type," ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various

... in amazement. He was a lean slip of a man, almost as black as a negro, with his hair running back above the temples, and legs like walking-sticks. He stood wreathed in smiles and nodding confirmation of Hamet's words. But to Hillyard, with the emotions of the dark hour just past still shivering about ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason

... command for Sutter's Fort. On arriving there, he placed the fort under military rule, and left his prisoners, General Vallejos and the two captains, who had been captured at Sonoma. Also an American by the name of Lace, who was a brother-in-law to General Vallejos, and whose predilections appeared to lean in favor of the Mexican side. With all his mountain men, including Kit Carson, Fremont then took up his line of march towards Monterey, for the purpose of attacking and taking possession of the town; but, this movement had been anticipated by Commodore Sloat and the American squadron. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... stump burning like a torch; a great tree standing helpless like a martyr at the stake, suddenly transformed into a frenzied pillar of fire.... Along the front of this whirlpool of flame toiled, with despairing fury, four lean, powerful men. As they raised their blackened, desperate faces and saw the car there, actually there, incredibly there, black with its load of men, they gave a deep-throated shout of relief, though they did not for an instant stop the frantic plying of their picks and hoes. The nine men ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... streamlet's emerald edge; And over the stream on the gradual hill, Its headstones glimmering palely white, Is the graveyard quiet and still. I wade through its grasses rank and deep, Past slanting marbles mossy and dim, Carven with lines from some old hymn, To one where my mother used to lean On Sunday noons and weep. That tall white shape I looked upon With a mysterious dread, Linking unto the senseless stone The image of the dead— The father I never had seen; I remember on dark nights of storm, When our parlor was bright and warm, I would turn away from its glowing ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley

... lookin' him over while he unwraps about four yards of fishline from around the neck of a leather money pouch. Odd old Rube he was, straight and lean, and smoked up like ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford

... next morning Simpkins presented himself at the Society's office, and a few minutes later he found himself in the fascinating presence of Mrs. Athelstone. He soon grasped the details of his simple duties, and then, like a lean, awkward mastiff, padded along at her heels while she moved about the hall and pointed out the things which ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer

... daring conception that a common soldier might turn out to be the missing heir of a baronet rang like a challenge in the ears of the older romanticism. It is her style, however, that is Ruby Binns's most enduring gift to English prose literature. Lean, restrained, economical, it holds (for me) the very spirit of the English ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 3, 1916 • Various

... shall be dear To her; and she shall lean her ear In many a secret place Where rivulets dance their wayward round And beauty born of murmuring sound Shall ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

... objectionable paragraph. "It would seem," Cooper had written, "that as nature has given its periods to the stages of animal life, it has also set limits to all moral and political ascendency. While the city of the Medici is receding from its crumbling walls, like the human form shrinking into 'the lean and slippered pantaloon,' the Queen of the Adriatic sleeping on her muddy isles, and Rome itself is only to be traced by fallen temples and buried columns, the youthful vigor of America is fast covering the wilds of the West with the happiest fruits of human industry." ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... exclaimed the prince, attempting to lean forward to look out of the door; but the movement he was obliged to make cost him so much trouble that he soon hastened ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... may transact my business sooner. Keep Loftus in a good temper, Kate. Don't let him quarrel with Mabel, and, above all things, do not breathe to a soul that your mother has gone to London. Now, kiss me, dear. It is a comfort to have a grown-up daughter to lean on." ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade

... delightful Herb whose tender Green Fledges the River's Lip on which we lean— Ah, lean upon it lightly! for who knows From what once lovely Lip it ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam

... a nail. Hurrying to get out of the room, he banged his forehead against a hat-peg and gave himself a huge bump; then, suddenly stepping back, he skinned his arm on the screen, near the piano; he tried to lean on the piano, but the lid fell on his hands and crushed his fingers; he rushed out of the office like a madman, slipped on the staircase and came down the whole of the first flight on his back. I was just passing with mother. We picked him up. He was covered with bruises and his face ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux

... origin; unless there are preponderant reasons for diverting it, grounded on our need of the word to express a certain sense, and the greater difficulty of finding any other word for the same purpose. It is better to lean to the classical than to the vulgar sense of 'indifferent,' 'impertinent,' ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... try her little wiles to delay him, but in her heart she longed to hear the words he had been about to say. It had been very sweet to know that this brown, handsome son of Arizona loved her, very restful to know that for the first time in her life she could trustfully let her weakness lean on the strength of another. And, more than either, though she sometimes smilingly pretended to deny it to herself, was the ultimate fact that she loved him. His voice was music to her, his presence joy. He brought with him sunshine, and ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine

... the twisting alley, he came to where a gleam from a shuttered window showed a slatted glimpse of a woman struggling in the arms of a lean, wiry peasant of the Camargue. Riviere seized him by the collar and shook him off as one shakes a dog from the midst of a fray. The man loosed his grip of the woman, and snarling like a dog, writhed himself free of Riviere. Then, whipping out a knife from his ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg

... of a bear, the raccoon, comes out of his den in the ledges, and leaves his sharp digitigrade track upon the snow,—traveling not unfrequently in pairs,—a lean, hungry couple, bent on pillage and plunder. They have an unenviable time of it,—feasting in the summer and fall, hibernating in winter, and starving in spring. In April I have found the young of the previous year creeping around the fields, so reduced by starvation as to be quite helpless, ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... rang for his valet. He could scarcely stand, while Gunther was assisting him to change his dressing-gown for his uniform. [Footnote: This was the brother of him who was the lover of Rachel.] His toilet over, he was obliged to lean upon the valet for support, for his limbs were ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... the features of Roman life is the fashionable drive on Monte Pincio in the late afternoons. An hour or two before sunset the terrace of the Piazza Trinita di Monti begins to be thronged with pedestrians, who lean over the marble balustrade, gazing at the incomparable pictured panorama where the vast dome of St. Peter's, the dense pines of the Villa Pamphilia-Doria on the Janiculum, and the dark cypress groves on Monte Mario loom up ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting

... he was skinny, with a lean and hungry look; And a countenance as placid as a frozen winter brook; His brow was broad and Grecian, and his eye was snell and keen, And his head was stuffed with knowledge of a dozen books, I ween; And they say his nose was Roman as the bill of any ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe

... literal meaning of the expression here rendered 'to trust' is to lean upon anything. As we say, trust is reliance. As a weak man might stay his faltering, tottering steps upon some strong staff, or might lean upon the outstretched arm of a friend, so we, conscious of our weakness, aware of our faltering feet, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... conductors—has been to hold the balance fairly between the parties, to avoid fixed and bitter partisanships, to "hit all round" as occasion seemed to demand, and to award praise where it appeared to be deserved. If there was to be a general "list" or "lean," it was to be towards a moderate Liberalism—towards sympathy with the popular cause of freedom both of act and speech, and enthusiastic championship of ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... I have become resigned at last; though for many weeks I have wrestled for strength, for patience. It was so exceedingly bitter to know that the time drew near when I should see you no more; to feel that I should stretch out my hands to you, and lean on you, and yet look no longer on the dear face of my child, my boy, my all. But my prayers were heard; the sting has passed away, and I am resigned. I am glad that we have spoken of it; now my mind is calmer, and I can sleep. Good ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... I have no thorn To lean my breast on. I've been happy all day, And happiness ever ...
— The Lamp and the Bell • Edna St. Vincent Millay

... dying down softly and only the wind kept up its ghostly surge and made the stack lean and gravely settle from side to side. Amory was in a trance. He felt that every moment was precious. He had never met a girl like this before—she would never seem quite the same again. He didn't at all feel like a character in a play, the appropriate ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... informant, crossed to the corner of the room, and slung his blanket-roll across his back. "Much obliged to you fellas," he said, his lean, timorous face beaming with gratitude. "It makes a guy feel happy when a bunch of strangers does him a good turn. You see I ain't got the chanct to get a job, like you fellas, me bein' a Bo. I had a pal onct—but He crossed over. He was the only one that ever done me a good turn without my askin'. ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs

... invited his guests to enter. Two other priests stood before a table set with wine and delicate confections, their hands concealed in their wide brown sleeves, but their unmatched physiognomies—the one lean and jovial, the other plump and resigned—alight with the same smile of welcome. Father Abella mentioned them as his coadjutor Father Martin Landaeta, and their guest Father Jose Uria of San Jose; and then the three, with ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton

... the traveller does not drive in the usual way. There is no driver on the box, and you do not lean back comfortably in a four-wheeled carriage on springs. To begin with, there is no road at all and no rest-houses; but horses must be changed frequently, and this is done in the Mongolian villages. The Mongols, however, are ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... If he were to get any help from these silent aloof rangers it must be by striking fire from them in one swift stroke. Planting himself squarely before the two tall cowboys who were standing, he looked straight into their lean, bronzed faces. He spared a full moment for that keen cool gaze before ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... "He's long and lean, like a rail, with a kind of a bend in him when he walks, and the under lid of his left eye drawed like you'd pulled it down and stuck a tack in it. He's wearin' a cap, and he's kind of whiskered up, like he'd ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden

... entered the Poivriere. The sergeant-major of the 53d, who followed him, an old soldier, decorated and medaled—who had smelt powder many scores of times—was still more overcome. He grew as pale as the corpses lying on the ground, and was obliged to lean against the wall for support. The two physicians alone retained their ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau

... so, even so, will the hope of the other be as unsuccessful; 'So are the paths of all that forget God, and the hypocrite's hope shall perish; whose hope shall be cut off, and whose trust shall be a spider's web. He shall lean upon his house, but it shall not stand; he shall hold it fast, but it shall not endure' (Job 8:13-15, 41:1-9). This is the hope that is not esteemed of God, nor the persons that have it, preferred by him a whit before their ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... her till she could lean across the sill. They leant there together, their faces nearly touching. His arm was still about her; she did not seem to notice it. He was dumb with ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson

... for that broken music in thy brains, Sir Fool," said Tristram, "I would break thy head. Fool, I came late, the heathen wars were o'er, The life had flown, we sware but by the shell— I am but a fool to reason with a fool Come, thou art crabb'd and sour: but lean me down, Sir Dagonet, one of thy long asses' ears, And hearken if my music be ...
— The Last Tournament • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... my feelings, but I cannot tell you all. Often when I plough my low ground, I place my little boy on a chair which screws to the beam of the plough—its motion and that of the horses please him; he is perfectly happy and begins to chat. As I lean over the handle, various are the thoughts which crowd into my mind. I am now doing for him, I say, what my father formerly did for me, may God enable him to live that he may perform the same operations for the same ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur

... the old Morton Place, where no one had lived these seven years now; and they said the chestnuts away up in that region miles beyond the mill-pond was bearing a record crop this season, as if to make amends for lean years a-plenty. ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson

... youngster. "I'm beginning to see daylight. You keep all this under your hat, sonny, and come over as early in the morning as you can. We'll talk it over then, after I've had a chance to sleep on this." He indicated the cartridge. "Tell me, though—was one of the men a tall, lean chap with a sabre scar ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart

... quarter's washing; and owed five times that amount to a little old tailor, who, with huge spectacles on his nose, turned up to him, out of a little cupboard which he occupied in Closet Court, and which Titmouse had to pass whenever he went to or from his lodgings, a lean, sallow, wrinkled face, imploring him to "settle his small account." All the cash in hand which he had to meet contingencies between that day and quarter-day, which was six weeks off, was about twenty-six shillings, of which he had taken one for ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren

... proceeded in my discourse with a flowin sale. It's easy demonstratin anythin yoor awjence wants to beleeve, and wich their interest lies in. For instants, I hev notist wicked men, who wuz somewhat wedded to sin, genrally lean toward Universalism; men heavily developed in the back uv the neck are easily convinst uv the grand trooths uv free love; and them ez is too fond uv makin money to rest on the seventh day, hev serious doubts ez to whether the observance ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby

... Uhila's soul anew, his blood, Blazing with conflict, gave him mad-man's strength And devil's skill. His straining form relaxed, Heavily slipping earthward; ere Malua Could gain fresh hold upon his fainting foe, Uhila with a twist had laid him low, Knee on his breast, lean fingers at his throat ...
— The Rose of Dawn - A Tale of the South Sea • Helen Hay

... to do it," said Miss Slocum, frankly. "Your heart is all right, Lorena Jane; but a warm heart will not make people forget that you lean your elbow on the table and put your food into your mouth with your knife. Such things jar on other people just as Flap-Jacks and the dish-cloth jar on you. Don't you understand? But your desire to improve shows that you are ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan

... Your Gaoler shall deliuer you the keyes That locke vp your restraint. For you Posthumus, So soone as I can win th' offended King, I will be knowne your Aduocate: marry yet The fire of Rage is in him, and 'twere good You lean'd vnto his Sentence, with what patience Your ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... tempted to imitate them as far as possible by plunging overboard and swimming twice or thrice round the ship, had I not happened to have noticed a large shark under her counter, when, to test the clearness of the water, I happened to lean over the taffrail to look at the rudder and stern-post. Even the men dawdled over the job of washing decks that morning, using a much greater quantity of water than usual, and placing themselves where there was a chance to get the hose played upon their bare ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood

... justly too, conclude Me guilty of the worst ingratitude, Should I be silent, or should I forbear At this sad accident to shed a tear; A tear! said I? ah! that's a petit thing, A very lean, slight, slender offering, Too mean, I'm sure, for me, wherewith t'attend The unexpected funeral of my friend: A glass of briny tears charged up to th' brim. Would be too few for me to shed ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... wall-flower, That mocks the dungeon's unavailing gloom; The ponderous chains and gratings of strong iron, There rusted amid heaps of broken stone That mingled slowly with their native earth. There the broad beam of day, which feebly once Lighted the cheek of lean captivity With a pale and sickly glare, then freely shone On the pure smiles of infant playfulness. No more the shuddering voice of hoarse despair Pealed through the echoing vaults, but soothing notes Of joy fingered winds and gladsome birds And ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various

... part seemed sure; yet it was in keeping with his past temperament. The girl was the extreme contrast of himself, with dark—almost piercing-eyes, and a paleness which was physically constitutional—the joy of the artistic spirit. It was the head of a tragedienne or a martyr, and the lean, rather beautiful ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... to time as they advanced they saw strange lean figures scraping and scratching amid the weeds and thistles, who, on sight of the band of horsemen, threw up their arms and dived in among the brushwood, as shy and as swift as wild animals. More than once, however, they ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... a copy of any of those works without feeling a certain tenderness for the yellow-haired little rascal who used to lean above the magic pages hour after hour, religiously believing every word he read, and no more doubting the reality of Sindbad the Sailor, or the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance, than he did the existence ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... Massachusetts: 'Because it is not the province, and does not belong to the power of any legislative assembly, in a republican government, to decide on the complexional affinity of those who choose to be united together in wedlock; and it may as rationally decree that corpulent and lean, tall and short, strong and weak persons shall not be married to each other as that there must be an agreement in the complexion ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson

... on the collars and cuffs were carefully washed and rinsed, and presently Marion, with her hands only a trifle pinker for the operation, was ready to lean against a chair and discuss ways and means. Her long apprenticeship in school-rooms had given her the habit of standing instead of sitting, even when there was ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy

... chuckled again with his lean chuckle, and seemed to be mightily tickled at something beyond my comprehension. "No," he answered, "generally he's an early bird—airley to bed and airley to rise—yes, he's the bird what catches the worm. But to-night he went out a peddling, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... her mother at the window added its suggestion—a lean, sallow, lined face, full of anxious furrows, with a rim of scanty gray-streaked hair about the brow, with spectacles perched above, and beneath the flabby jaw ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... great ranch meant to her. She loved it all—the grove of cottonwoods, the old stone house, the amber-tinted water, and the droves of shaggy, dusty horses and mustangs, the sleek, clean-limbed, blooded racers, and the browsing herds of cattle and the lean, ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey

... splintered bones. Rabble of Pharaohs and Arsacidae Keep their cold house within thee; thou hast sucked down How many Ninevehs and Hecatompyloi, And perished cities whose great phantasmata O'erbrow the silent citizens of Dis:- Hast not thy fill? Tarry awhile, lean Earth, for thou shalt drink, Even till thy dull throat sicken, The draught thou grow'st most fat on; hear'st thou not The world's knives bickering in their sheaths? O patience! Much offal of a foul world comes thy ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson

... Friendship Society other: ecology groups; human rights groups; nationalist pragmatists (no foreign influence over Central Eurasia); neo-Eurasianists (against Western influence for the area); religious groups; westernizers (lean towards ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... ghost, handed down through the generations, as necessary a piece of furniture as the tester-bed or the sideboard. Perhaps not all of these mysterious visitants were as quiet as the shadowy lady of the Brice house, who would glide softly in at the hour of gloaming and, with her head on her hand, lean against the mantel, look sadly into the faces of the occupants of the room, and vanish without a sound—of course, it is undeniable that Annapolis would have ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett

... his were talking at a little distance it pleased her to lean close to Davidge and tease him ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... Saints; Or in the night, after a little sleep, I wake: the chill stars sparkle; I am wet With drenching dews, or stiff with crackling frost. I wear an undress'd goatskin on my back; A grazing iron collar grinds my neck; And in my weak, lean arms I lift the cross, And strive and wrestle with thee till I die: O mercy, mercy! ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart

... the leather showed a dulled black upon the toes and a weathered yellow at the sides and heels. As he spoke his voice ran up and down—the voice of a deaf person who cannot hear his own words clearly, so that he pitches them in a false key. For added proof of this affliction he held a lean and slightly tremulous ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... wonder if that traditional feud is long in wearing out of the stock. The wounds of the old warfare were long ahealing, and an east wind of hard times puts a new ache in every one of them. Thrift was the first lesson in their horn-book, pointed out, letter after letter, by the lean finger of the hard schoolmaster, Necessity. Neither were those plump, rosy-gilled Englishmen that came hither, but a hard-faced, atrabilious, earnest-eyed race, stiff from long wrestling with the Lord in prayer, and who had taught Satan to dread the new Puritan hug. Add ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell

... prayer. It was a very quiet little meeting. Not much said. Everyone knew how solemn the occasion was. Everyone felt it might be his last among them. It was as if the brooding Christ had made Himself felt in every heart. Each boy felt like crying out for some strong arm to lean upon in this his sore need. Each gave himself with all his heart to the quiet reaching up to God. It was as if the eating of that fudge had been a solemn sacrament in which their souls were brought near to God and to the dear ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill

... pride of death, Thin, clamant greens And delicate yellows that exhaust The exquisite chromatics of decay: From ruining gardens, from reluctant woods— Dear, multitudinously reluctant woods!— And sering margents, forced To be lean and bare and perished grace by grace, And flower by flower discharmed, Comes, to a purpose none, Not even the Scorner, which is the Fool, can blink, The dead-march ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley

... his wife upon a miserable horse, lean and lank, which he had picked out for the purpose, and himself and his servant no better mounted, they journeyed on through rough and miry ways, and ever when this horse of Katherine's stumbled, he would storm and swear at the poor jaded beast, who could scarce crawl under his burthen, ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... half-past five we were quite prepared and ready for departure. Besides bread and cheese, a bottle of water for myself, and one of brandy for my guides, we were also provided with long sticks, tipped with iron points to sound the depth of the snow, and to lean upon. ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer

... draughts to Ceres, so she'd top the ground With good tall ears, our frets and worries drowned Let Fortune brew fresh tempests, if she please, How much can she knock off from joys like these! Have you or I, young fellows, looked more lean Since this new holder came upon the scene? Holder, I say, for tenancy's the most That he, or I, or any man can boast: Now he has driven us out: but him no less His own extravagance may dispossess Or slippery lawsuit: in the last resort ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace

... more or less in them, and in a period of hard times all feel the stress to a greater or less degree. It surely ought not to be necessary to enter into any proof of this statement; the memory of the lean years which began in 1893 is still vivid, and we can contrast them with the conditions in this very year which is now closing. Disaster to great business enterprises can never have its effects limited to the men at the top. It spreads throughout, and while it is bad for everybody, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... The son was lean, and his cigarette—a dilettante variation of honest tobacco-smoking that had always been a source of irritation to his father—did not look at all out of place between his long, thin fingers; in fact, nothing else would have seemed quite suitable. Barton ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... dwell, the things which occupy her mind—but I leave them. I would rather go near her bed. With a movement at once mad, frightened and trembling, I lift the quilts that clothe it and my gaze enters it, and my knees lean trembling on the edge of this great lifeless thing, which, alone among dead things, is one ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... best medicine; it has quite cured my face and left me no pain but the impossibility of being in two places at once, which is no small sorrow, since one of them would be near you. But the boys [Lord Drumlanrig and Lord Charles Douglas] are too lean to travel as yet. Compassion being the predominant fashion of the place, we are preserved alive with as much care as the partridges, which no one yet has had the heart to kill, though several barbarous attempts have been made. If I could write ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville

... a neighbouring Town, a certain Nobleman, Friend to De Pais, call'd Count Vernole, a Man of about forty years of Age, of low Stature, Complexion very black and swarthy, lean, lame, extreme proud and haughty; extracted of a Descent from the Blood-Royal; not extremely brave, but very glorious: he had no very great Estate, but was in Election of a greater, and of an Addition of Honour from the King, his Father having done most worthy Services against the Hugonots, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... on shadows riding through the grass, And feel the night lean cool against my face; And challenged by the sentinel of space, ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE

... covered with some kind of rug, and spread it on a bench for Bulba. Yankel lay upon the floor on a similar mattress. The red-haired Jew drank a small cup of brandy, took off his caftan, and betook himself—looking, in his shoes and stockings, very like a lean chicken—with his wife, to something resembling a cupboard. Two little Jews lay down on the floor beside the cupboard, like a couple of dogs. But Taras did not sleep; he sat motionless, drumming on the table with his fingers. He kept his pipe in his ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... then slowly, deliberately, the steamer changed its course, and came straight up the river, struggling against the full strength of the current. I could see a man step from out the pilot house onto the upper forward deck, lean out over the rail, and speak to the others below, pointing toward me across the water. A half-dozen grouped themselves at the bow, ready for action, their figures growing more sharply defined as the struggling craft approached. The man above stood ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish

... LEAN-BOW. Having a sharp entrance; a thin narrow bow being opposed to bold bow. Fine forward, very fine is ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... "Lean thy face down! drop it in These two hands, that I may hold 'Twixt their palms thy cheek and chin, Stroking back the curls of gold. 'Tis a fair, fair face, in sooth— Larger eyes and redder mouth Than mine were ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various

... anxiously through the window. Presently she saw him relax from his position of strained attention with a great sigh, almost a groan, and lean back in his chair, covering his eyes with his hands. When he took them down, his face had the aged, ravaged expression of exhaustion which had so startled her on her arrival. Now she felt none ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... walked. Julian's cough had been bad during the evening, and now the cold night-air seemed to give him much trouble. Presently, just as they turned a corner, a severe blast of wind met them full in the face. Julian began coughing violently, and all at once became so weak that he had to lean against a palisading. Waymark, looking closer in alarm, saw that the handkerchief which the poor fellow was holding to his mouth was covered ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing

... glass may not come up instead of that precious stone? "John Gordon might be a very steady fellow; but we have only his own word for that,"—as Mr Whittlestaff observed to himself. There could not be a doubt but that Mr Whittlestaff himself was the safer staff of the two on which a young lady might lean. He did make all these excuses for himself, and determined that they were of such a nature that he might rely upon them with safety. But still there was a pang in his bosom—a silent secret—which kept on whispering ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope

... his chariot-wheels. Moreover, since he had become an earl, he was a changed man. He no longer sided with, but against, the people; sheltering himself from their clamours in the stronghold of privilege. Hence it was, that when he coalesced with others, he found no support on which he could lean with safety, and by which he could assist the monarch. His staff was but a reed on which, if he leant, it pierced his hand. This Chatham felt; and though he clung tenaciously to office, from the fear of displaying his weakness and incapacity, he only acted, when he ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... red That now are seen To be overspread With a mouldy green, A fresh fair head Would often lean From the sunny casement And scan the scene, While blithely spoke the wind to the ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy

... Characters allotted him were such, that none besides, then, or since, ever topp'd; for his Figure, which was diminutive and mean, (being Round-shoulder'd, Meagre-fac'd, Spindle-shank'd, Splay-footed, with a sour Countenance and long lean Arms) render'd him a proper Person to discharge Jago, Foresight and Ma'lignij, in the Villain.—This Person acted strongly with his Face,—and (as King Charles said) was the best Villain in the World.' The ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn

... bleak and half pastoral; a huge white monastery rises abruptly from the green floor of the valley and complicates its picturesqueness with an element rare in Swiss scenery. Hard by is a group of chalets and inns, with the usual appurtenances of a prosperous Swiss resort—lean brown guides in baggy homespun, lounging under carved wooden galleries, stacks of alpenstocks in every doorway, sun-scorched Englishmen without shirt-collars. Our two friends sat a while at the door of an inn, discussing a pint of wine, and then Roderick, who was indefatigable, ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... I dared not lean over the railing of the car. Nevertheless I perceived a little black spot. This was Spire. The broad Rhine looked like a riband, the great roads like threads. Above our heads the sky was of a deep azure; I was ...
— A Voyage in a Balloon (1852) • Jules Verne

... Faith may move mountains, but chiefly through the medium of a shovel. When a man is hungry his need is for food. When he is lonely he craves companionship. When he grieves he desires sympathy. And the Providence Mr. Thompson had been taught to lean so hard upon did not chop his wood, cook his meals, furnish him with congenial society, comfort ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... all the bone, fat, gristle, and skin. Cut the lean in small thin pieces, about as large, generally, as the palm of your hand. Beat the meat well with the rolling-pin, to make it juicy and tender. If you put in the fat, it will make the gravy too greasy and strong, as ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie

... thou wilt preserve, O Lord, From this vile generation; Make us to lean upon thy word, With calm anticipation. The wicked walk on every side When, 'mid thy flock, the vile abide In ...
— The Hymns of Martin Luther • Martin Luther

... she could see them all! Bud Mansie, meager, lean, with a shifting eye; Garry Patterson, of the red, good-natured face; Phil Branch, stolid and short and muscled like a giant; Handsome Dick Wilbur on his racing bay; Black Gandil, with his villainies from the South Seas like an invisible ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick

... Halcyone pointed to her head—"and it talks to me like another voice, and when I am alone up a tree away from people, and all is beautiful, it seems to make it tight round here,—and go from my head into my side," and she placed her lean brown ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn

... pictures showing the spare and lean cattle of earlier times, the former paucity of our flocks and herds, and the present innumerable supplies,—the result of good treatment, and of people's obedience to a law of mine which forbade them to slaughter the female, so that our ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)

... approached about this and listened, stroking his lean chin, while the mother eloquently ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey

... as well as I did, but if ever I drew near when Walters had gone to lean over the bulwarks and talk to him, I could hear that it was in French—bad French, spoken very slowly on Walters' part, and he used to have to make Jarette say what he had to say two or three times over before he could ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn

... the world must have echoed that sharp command; every television screen must have shown to a breathless audience the figure whose blond hair was awry, whose lean face was afire with protest, as Chet Bullard ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin

... you will be pleased to learn that the unities were properly respected, and the whole piece, with one exception, moved in harmony with classical rules. That exception was the comic countryman, a lean marionnette in wooden shoes, who spoke in prose and in a broad patois much appreciated by the audience. He took unconstitutional liberties with the person of his sovereign; kicked his fellow-marionnettes in the mouth with his wooden ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... world within its frame Which Fancy peoples o'er with radiant forms, Replete with life and spirit excellence. O! there is glory in the thought that now I stand absolved from all the chilling forms And falsities of life, that like frail reeds Pierce the blind palms of those that lean on them, And from the springs of my own being draw All strength, and hope, and joyance, all that makes Lone meditations sweet, and schools the heart For prophecy. In the o'erpeopled world We seem like babes that cannot walk alone, But fasten on the skirts of other men, Their creeds, conclusions, ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels

... and extend right arm toward the flag. 2 Touch forehead with tips of the fingers. 3. Right palm over the heart. 4. Both hands extended upward. 5. Lean forward, hands at sides. 6. With emphasis, right hand pointing to the flag. ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger

... of a sharp tomahawk, from a shorter man—who was no friend of theirs—just about the time they died. The slits open occasionally, and mothers of the nation, mostly holding their garments together at neck or bosom, lean out—at right angles almost—and peer up and down the road, as if they are casually curious as to what is keeping the rent collector so late this morning. Then they shut up till late in the day, when a boy or two comes ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson

... each other's arms. Betty admitted afterward that she wished she had some one to lean on, but she gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles went white with the strain. Mollie clutched the sides of the seat in a grip of something like despair. The boys looked wonderingly at one another, and then at the strange ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope

... unconscious of it. He has not my intimate knowledge of big fish, but he did not seem to need that. He is powerful in the shoulders and arms, his hands are strong and hard from baseball and rowing, and he is practically tireless. He never rested while fighting a fish. We never saw him lean the rod on the gunwale. All of which accounts for his quick conquering of a Marlin swordfish. We have yet to see him work upon a broadbill or a big tuna; and that is something Captain Dan and I are anticipating with much ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey

... Accordingly, he is a bad horse to try to force by anything. If possible, it is much better to give him a little time, and bring him up as gently as may be to the object of terror. When he behaves well I lean forward and give him a lump of sugar, and now the old boy eagerly puts around his head when I stretch out my hand. Bleistein I have ridden very little, because I think one of his forelegs is shaky, and I want to spare him all I can. Mother ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt

... and had succeeded in reconciling her conscience to the possession of beautiful things by people with a purpose, it irked her to feel that she was hampered in living up to her new-found faith by the bugbear of a lean purse. She had expected, as Wilbur's wife, to figure quickly and gracefully in the van of New York intellectual and social progress. Instead, she was one among thousands, living in a new and undeveloped locality, unrecognized by the people of whom she read in ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant

... to provide for the labourers, and how much small beer would keep them in good heart, and not make them too merry. And she had too much good sense to get into rivalry with Susan Sisson, the hind's wife, who lived in a kind of lean-to cottage opening into the farm-yard, and was the chief (real) manager of the dairy and poultry—though such was not Jaquetta's view of the case by ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge

... street, arm in arm. On the edge of the light, the middle one, a low, thick-set, black-browed fellow, pushed his comrades away, fell drunkenly, and slipped loosely to the street, while the two stood above him in disgust. One of them was a mere boy and the other was a giant, with a lean face, so like Lincoln's that Crittenden started when the ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.

... head. Under king, noble, and Jesuit, the lank, lean body would not thrive. Even commerce wore the sword, decked itself with badges of nobility, aspired to forest seigniories and hordes of savage retainers. Along the borders of the sea an adverse power was strengthening and widening, with slow but stedfast growth, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... obliged to lean against the side of the fireplace. "To a councilor belonging to the parliament, ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... when building such large corridors, massive staircases, lofty vestibules, and spacious, resounding rooms. That given to the Queen was like an alcove, decorated by six large marble caryatides, joined by a handsome balustrade high enough to lean upon. The four-post bed was of azure blue velvet, with flowered work and rich gold and silver tasselling. Over the chimneypiece was the huge Bleink-Elmeink coat-of-arms, supported ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... them had ever done anything to distinguish themselves either for good or bad. Her parents lived on a small New Hampshire farm and she had just been graduated from the village academy and had come to town to visit her aunt. The latter was a tall, lean woman, who, after the death of her husband had been forced to keep lodgers to eke out a living. Ruth showed me pictures of her mother and father, and they might have been relatives of mine as far as looks went. The ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton

... was lean and wizened, twisted like a vine-shoot, with long, dust-coloured hair and a melancholy, impassive face that seemed carved out of old oak. He put in an appearance at Saint-Elophe once every three or four months. He knocked at the doors of the ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc

... came a cry, shriller and sharper than before, and Allan, looking back, saw a great, lean, hungry gray wolf burst from the underbrush into the road, followed by dozens more; and in a moment the road behind him was full of wolves, open-mouthed and in keen chase. Their yells now seemed notes of exultation, for ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various

... far too long and the theme involved too grave and difficult for treatment here. But I would venture to suggest that Aristotle inclined to slur over the physical and lean the more to the final cause, for this simple reason (whatever other reasons there may be), that he was a better biologist than a physicist: that he lacked somewhat the mathematical turn of mind which was intrinsic to the older schools ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... had the deck chair next mine remarked affably. Yes, the war meant that to us surely,—we were fast raking in most of the gold that Europe has been forced to throw on the table of international finance, the savings, the dots, the stakes of her next generation. The number of lean-faced American business men, war brokers, on the steamer was plain evidence of that. Already Prosperity was flooding into America—that prosperity upon which our President congratulated the country in ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick

... journals manifested a steady tendency to lean toward the Republican opposition in the United States, down to the month of August, when the amendments proposed by various Senators bade fair to jeopardize the Treaties and render the ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... Sh[a]kyamuni, and exhibits rather the mystic and esoteric sides of the faith. The former, which spread northwards and on to Nepaul, Tibet, China, Mongolia and Japan, leaving southern India, Burma and Siam to its rival, began early to lean towards the deification of Buddha as a personal Saviour. New Buddhas and B[o]dhisatvas were added, and new worlds were provided for them to live in; in China, especially, there was an enormous extension of the mythological ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... bulls. The mysterious sound sent all the gulls screaming into the air, and frightened the basking walruses on the ledges three miles away. Every seal that heard it shuddered and dived, and an old white bear, prowling along the desolate beach in search of dead fish, lifted his lean head ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts

... soul was encased within the spare but well-ribbed form which had that "lean and hungry look" described by England's greatest bard as bespeaking little sleep of nights, but much of ambition, self-reliance, and impatience of control. His lip and eye denoted the man of unyielding temper, and his very hair, slightly silvered, stood erect like quills round his ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... of relief, lowered his weapon and looked questioningly at his brother. The shadow of the log cabin was upon him, making more sinister his uncouth attire, and his lean vindictive face under the huge Mexican hat. Gledware, not daring to move, kept his eyes fixed on that deep gloom out of which at any moment might spurt forth the red flash of death. From within the cabin came loud oaths inspired by cards or drink, as if the inmates would drown ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis

... to the bedside, and Rainham's eyes suddenly opened. They were immensely large, strangely brilliant; his face had fallen in, was so white and long and lean, that these tremendous eyes seemed almost all of the man that was still to ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... floor rooms were divided by cretonne partitions, or curtains, made secure top and bottom, and the coloring of these screens gave the place an ideal tone in color. The kitchen was outside under a lean-to tent. ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose

... reader one of the company, let him rise from the well-appointed table—its silver, bright as the complex motions of butler's elbows can make it; its china, ornate though not elegant; its ham, huge, and neither too fat nor too lean; its game-pie, with nothing to be desired in composition, or in flavour natural or artificial;—let him rise from these and go to the left of the two windows, for there are two opposite each other, the ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... of two varieties, and Satan's two grand masterpieces appeal to both. To the proud man, who is a law unto himself, he brings infidelity as the grand temptation: 'Ye shall be as gods'—'Yea, hath God said?'—and lastly, 'There is no God.' To the weaker nature, which demands authority to lean on, he brings Popery, offering to decide for you all the difficult questions of heart and life with authority—offering you the romantic fancy of a semi-goddess in its worship of the Virgin, in whose gentle bosom you may repose every trouble, and ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt



Words linked to "Lean" :   spindle-legged, body weight, slim-waisted, leaner, lean back, place, lean on, rely, scarecrowish, haggard, gangly, bank, spatial relation, lay, wasp-waisted, set, be given, list, pitch, heel, tend, suffer, fat, trust, angle, wispy, recline, slant, be, take kindly to, scraggy, twiglike, slim, sunken-eyed, unprofitable, shriveled, gravitate, lean-to tent, skimpy, reedlike, put, wizened, lank, rawboned, move, ectomorphic, leaning, rich, run, slight, emaciated, spindly, lean-to, wasted, pinched, thin, lanky, weedy, cadaverous, insufficient, svelte, bend, trim, underweight, bony, weather, skinny



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