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Lean-to   Listen
adjective
Lean-to  adj.  (Arch.) Having only one slope or pitch; said of a roof.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Lean-to" Quotes from Famous Books



... Jansen and Captain Johnson, who, Mark said, must be related, as their names were the same, spread their blankets in the forward end of the boat. On shore the negro crew built for themselves a thatched lean-to of poles and palm-leaves beside the fire, that was already throwing its cheerful light across the dark surface ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe

... it would not have done to have relied upon it. The hut contained a large general room where all would take their meals together, a store-room, a bed-room for the men, and a smaller one for Mr Rawlings, Seth, Noah, and Sailor Bill. A small "lean-to" as a kitchen was erected against the hut, and layers of coarse turf, eighteen inches thick, were built up against the outer wall all round for additional protection, as the winter would be bitterly cold, and a great thickness of material would ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson

... a matter of pride with her to accept her girlhood's favorite, and accept it she did! And having borrowed a side-saddle, she rode home, apparently quite contented. A little shed, or lean-to, was built in the rear of the house, and Stella became a member of Thorkel Tomlevold's family. Odd as it may seem, the fortunes of the family took a turn for the better from the day she arrived; Thorkel rarely came home without big game, ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... bunkhouse where men collided with their fellows as they plunged about for discarded garments, gun-belts, and boots. But soon they began to straggle out of the door in twos and threes and singly, racing for the corral and for the lean-to where they kept ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer

... Something was wrong with her darling. She knew that as well as if she had been told so by word of mouth, and a dreadful numbness stole over her whole frame. As if in a dream, she saw Aunt Sally emerge from the lean-to, where the great horn was kept, and raised the thing to her lips; but the blast which followed seemed to have been ringing in her ears forever. The silence that succeeded lasted but a moment, yet was like an eternity. Then from one direction, and another, came the ranchmen, understanding ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond

... little white bed, in the pink ribbon chamber, as she had named it in sport, after she had let Lizzie furnish it to her taste, that last year before she was married. The child looked about her as if it were a palace, instead of a lean-to chamber with a sloping roof. She had never seen anything like this in her life, since those days when she went to the chateau. She touched the white walls softly, and passed her hand over the pink mats on the bureau with wondering awe. And then she curled up in the white bed when ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards

... bed in the little lean-to shed that formed a room separate from the main apartment of the cabin. The old woman sent Cicely to cook the dinner, while she gave her own attention exclusively to the still unconscious man. She brought water and washed him as ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... the dark of the lean-to shelter, just as its fellow was on sentry duty in the tree! Only this one did not have the self-color of the foliage to disguise it. Four-limbed, its long forearms curved about its bent knees, its general outline almost that of a human—if a human went clothed in a ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton

... his tongue in some sort, insomuch that he spoke weakly, and that it was to be feared he might utterly lose the use of it. Only in consequence of Turner's authoritative representations was Ralegh's chamber changed. In the little garden under the terrace was a lath and plaster lean-to. It had been Bishop Latimer's prison. Since it had been used as a hen-house. Ralegh had already been permitted to employ this out-house as a still room. He was allowed now to build a little room next it, and use ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... sinful enough to talk of it on his return home. No farmer would employ him in all the district round. He tramped about vainly looking for work, grew reckless, and took to drink. Visiting his cottage, consisting of one room and a "lean-to," I found his wife ill with fever, a fever-stricken babe in her arms, the second child lying dead on the bed. In answer to my soft-spoken questions: Yes, she was pining (starving), there was no work. Why did she leave the dead child on the bed? Because she had no other place for it till the coffin ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... openings on each side. In the times of the Great Rebellion the little cloisters were partly unroofed. The western alley is part of an interesting fifteenth-century house which is built over it, and the south alley has a lean-to roof. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse

... town of Antelope and the river Concho is the water-hole. The land immediately surrounding the water-hole is enclosed with a barb-wire fence. Within the enclosure is a ranch-house painted white, a scrub-cedar corral, a small stable, and a lean-to shading the water-hole from the desert sun. The place is altogether neat and habitable. It is rather a surprise to the chance wayfarer to find the ranch uninhabited. As desolate as a stranded steamer on a mud bank, it stands in the center of several hundred acres of desert, incapable, ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs

... A little lean-to against the main shack served as a stable; the creek down the hillside was the watering trough. And Donnegan stood by while the big Negro silently tended to the horses—removing the packs and preparing them for the night. ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand

... by the utter desolation of the scene, Desmond turned to retrace his steps to the house. Noticing a path traversing the kitchen garden, he followed it. It led to the back of the house, to the door of a kind of lean-to shed. The latch yielded on being pressed ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams

... generator-houses has proved efficient in many places, it can only be considered inferior to the plan of installing a proper heating arrangement. Occasionally, where local regulations do not forbid, the entire generator-house may be built as a "lean-to" against some brick wall which happens to be kept constantly warm, say by having a furnace or a large kitchen ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield

... Durer was not acquainted with any earlier style of architecture than the Romanesque and therefore he used it here. "The ruin serves as a stable. A roof of board is built out in front of the side-room which shelters the ox and ass, and under this lean-to lies the new born babe surrounded by angels who express their childish joy. Mary kneels and contemplates her child with glad emotion. Joseph, also deeply moved, kneels down on the other side of the child, ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon

... one-story frame with a lean-to for a kitchen, and an adjoining stable-shed, overshadowed all by two great chestnuts of the days when there were country lanes where now are paved streets, and on Manhattan Island there was farm by farm. A light gleamed in the window looking toward the street. As 'Liza's ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... the virtue of simplicity. The Metford tribe was housed in a lean-to which supported one wall of the kitchen, and the eight boarders slept upstairs over the main part of the house. The room was not large, but it had four corners, and in each corner stood a cheap iron bed with baggy springs and musty mattress. ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead

... the flap in the counter to let her through. The doorway beyond gave entrance to a wide hall, or "entry," between the store and the living-room. The kitchen was in a lean-to at the back. The table in the big room was already spread with a clean red-and-white checked tablecloth and set with heavy chinaware for a meal. A huge caster graced the center of the table, containing glass receptacles ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper

... drinking and conviviality in the best Philadelphia homes and also in the inns, where it was the custom of that day to entertain considerably. The old Red Lion Inn at North Second and Noble streets, a picturesque gambrel-roof structure of brick with a lean-to porch along the front, is an interesting survival of the inns and taverns of Colonial days, as was also the old Mermaid Inn in Mount Airy, until torn down not long ago. At such gatherings were represented the most brilliant ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins

... swift, half-puzzled glance at his chief's face; he started to ask a question, then scowled and checked himself and turned instead to kindle a fire in the stove of the lean-to kitchen of the cabin. But a half-hour later he was still murmuring the last phrase over to himself, perplexedly, when Steve came leading the horse Ragtime up to the open door. Saddled and with reins a-trail, the animal had been wandering ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans

... late November, 1901, that my friend, Leonidas Hubbard, Jr., asked me this question. All day he and I had been tramping through the snow among the Shawangunk Mountains in southern New York, and when the shades of evening fell we had built a lean-to of boughs to shelter us from the storm. Now that we had eaten our supper of bread and bacon, washed down with tea, we lay before our roaring campfire, luxuriating in its ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace

... that was what Joe thought, and, having deposited the basket of wood on the threshold of the kitchen door, he departed around the corner of the house. Presently he had climbed a pear-tree, dropped from one of its overhanging branches on the lean-to, raised a sash and ...
— Twilight Stories • Various

... evening of considerable worry, had retired to his little lean-to bedroom with its low, camp bedstead. It was useless sitting up any longer attempting one of those big worrying "thinks" which, usually, he was ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum

... accumulation of fallen rocks, encumbering the ground for at least thirty-five feet in height under the overhanging cornice. The fallen matter consists of the disintegration of the projecting lip. Against the cliff, under the shelter of the rock, as already said, are cottages with lean-to roofs, internally with the back and with at least half the ceiling composed of the rock. In one of these Lartet and Christy began to sink a pit, beside the owner's bed, and the work was carried on to conclusion by the late Dr. Massenat. The well was driven ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould

... cottage by the roadside. The roof is of old tile, once red, now dull from weather; the walls some tone of yellow; the folk are poor. Against it there grows a vigorous plant of jessamine, a still finer rose, a vine covers the lean-to at one end, and tea-plant the corner of the wall; beside these, there is a yellow-flowering plant, the name of which I forget at the moment, also trained to the walls; and ivy. Altogether, six plants ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies

... place he has there. A big shed of creosote-boards and felt roof, in the shape of a letter L, and at the side a small lean-to affair where he lives. One leg of the L is a workshop with an oil-engine to drive it; the other is for his plane, and opens at the end on the plank-road. As we came up a tall chap in a yellow leather suit all smeared with oil came out ...
— Aliens • William McFee

... roof and all thoroughly snow tight; an excellent place for spare clothing, furs, and ready use stores, and its extension affording complete protection to the entrance porch of the hut. The stables are nearly finished—a thoroughly stout well-roofed lean-to on the north side. Nelson has a small extension on the east side and Simpson a prearranged projection on the S.E. corner, so that on all sides the main building has thrown out limbs. Simpson has almost completed his ice cavern, light-tight lining, niches, floor and all. Wright ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... saved enough to pay for it, and in another year's time, and I have the help of God in it, I shall have saved enough for our house. What thinkest thou of a gambrel-roof and a lean-to, two square front rooms, both fire-rooms, and a living-room? And peonies and hollyhocks in the front yard, and two popple-trees, one on each side ...
— Giles Corey, Yeoman - A Play • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... the two assurances together, one inferred that weather at Borth would be like weather in general. However, in prospect of winds and wet, the open porch of the hotel was walled up with planks so as to put another door between the sou'-wester and the diners in the corridor. Also a long lean-to shed, like a cloister without windows, was run along two sides of the bowling- green wall. The outlay on the latter yielded no adequate return. It afforded some shelter for chapel roll-call, and for the few minutes' lounge before evening prayers, except when it rained ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine

... who was leading, suddenly stopped short and lifted his hand in warning. Before, in a bend of the stream that we were skirting, among the pines and spruces beside it was a lean-to, with a blackened fire, and two figures rolled in blankets; and back from the stream a little way, across in an open grassy spot, was a burro. It had been grazing, but now it was eying us with head and ears up. Red Fox ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin

... homelike and comfortable; in one corner stood the bed with white cover, there were two arm chairs, a tall dresser and two tables, one of the tables set for supper, which consisted simply of bread and milk which Crescimir was ready for as soon as he had washed his hands at the pump in the little "lean-to," and exchanged his long boots for ...
— A Napa Christchild; and Benicia's Letters • Charles A. Gunnison

... buckskin thongs, the other ends of the pole being imbedded in the ground. Other smaller saplings were trimmed and laid across the slanting poles, and on them were piled layer after layer of fan-like palmetto leaves. In a short space of time they had completed a lean-to which would protect them from any storm they were likely to experience at this season ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... the old examination halls which are now being torn down. These are the cells, about 25,000 in number, where the candidates for degrees used to be shut up during the examination period. Said cells are built in long rows, under a lean-to roof, mostly opening face to face on an open corridor, which is uncovered. Some of them face against a wall which is the back of the next row of cells. Cells are two and one-half feet wide by four long. In them are two ridges along the wall on each side, one at the height of a seat, the other ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey

... of the cigar in silence. In a lean-to the cowboys were going to bed. Muffled by the intervening wall came the mocking ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge

... said, "they're still in the lean-to behind the shack; and it would be kind of wiser to crawl back into the adit. The case of detonators was lying bang up ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss

... the little lean-to, filled to over-flowing with a stove, some tin cooking pans, a table full of soiled dishes and a case ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... lying upon the dirt floor of the lean-to attached to the one room of the cabin, felt a hand upon his shoulder and opened his eyes upon a shadowy figure, blocking up the starlight that came faintly ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... down to the beach, and in the late afternoon the sun came with grand effect across the gilded water and through the tall pine-trunks which bordered the zig-zag path. Medora had added a sleeping porch, a dining-porch and a lean-to for the car; and she entertained there through the summer lavishly, ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller

... rode away down the slope, waving his hand to us. And it was with a heavy heart that I went to feed our white mare, whinnying for food in the lean-to. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... acutely aware of his wounded shoulder; he winced but set his teeth hard and swung himself over until one foot came in contact with the iron frame of the greenhouse next to the masonry. To crawl to the end of the lean-to, bending to hold to the wall, and then to let himself down, ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham

... snow-shoes came to their ears did the doctor move. Thrusting his weapon into his coat pocket, he went to the door. Falkner followed him, and stood well out of sight when he opened it. Two men and a dog team were crossing the opening. McGill's dogs were fastened under a brush lean-to built against the cabin, and as the rival team of huskies began filling the air with their clamor for a fight, the stranger team halted and one of the two men came forward alone. He stopped with some astonishment before the aristocratic-looking little ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood

... figure, her head tied up in a dirty towel, her dress ragged and dirty, and much too small for her abundant figure. She welcomed us telling us the "po chile was bad sick" but she would talk to us. As the door of the lean-to kitchen was open, it offered a breath of outside air, even though polluted with the garbage scattered on the ground, and the odors from chickens, cats and ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration

... wondering eyes of a Thomas Jefferson. The muddy street had vanished to give place to a smooth black roadway, as springy under foot as a forest path, and as clean as the pike after a sweeping summer storm. The shops, with their false fronts and shabby lean-to awnings, were gone, or going, and in their room majestic vastnesses in brick and cut stone were rising, by their own might, as it would seem, out of disorderly mountains of ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... hut, or rather a lean-to, that pressed against the side of the mountain, a crazy structure with a single length of stove pipe leaning awry from the roof. And at the door of this house Haw-Haw Langley drew rein and stepped to the ground. ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand

... the kind that Rebecca Mary was afraid of. It was the only thing in the world she had ever been afraid of—a black night. But after the dream she got up stealthily and slipped through the blackness, out to Thomas Jefferson. It was only out to the little lean-to shed, but it seemed a very long way to Rebecca Mary. The blackness pressed up against her, she put out her little, trembling ...
— Rebecca Mary • Annie Hamilton Donnell

... hae verra little hoose-room i' this bit cot; for, excep this kitchen, we hae but the ben whaur Janet and me sleeps; and sae last year I spak' to the laird to lat me hae muckle timmer as I wad need to big a kin' o' a lean-to to the house ahin', so 'at we micht hae a kin' o' a bit parlour like, or rather a roomie 'at ony o' us micht retire till for a bit, gin we wanted to be oor lanes. He had nae objections, honest man. But somehoo ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... There was no reply. Then the boy opened the door leading into the lean-to. He had no reverence for retreats. If any door opened to Billy's hand, ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock

... a 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," has been adopted. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various

... hour to this I have known what the word "home" means, far better than I ever did in my life before. We have two rooms—she built one of them, a little lean-to, with her own hands. And her ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston

... a quantity of the dry sword-bladed soapweeds, and with one of the blankets made a lean-to shelter against the steep hillside. The place was becoming eerie in the gray evening that spread slowly over the dead land. The mist driven by the moaning wind became a melancholy drizzle. We dragged the soapweeds under ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt

... husband's brother, but he was killed out on a fox-hunt, an' she ain't never married nobody sence. That's one why she an' Madam are such good friends, most like sisters; as they would have been hadn't things turned out different. But there, my suz! Don't stan' there lookin' so wishful. Put the dog in the lean-to an' shut the door. There's a strong air comes through it an' I feel it, settin' still. Then you can tie my check apern over your white frock. Don't you never wear no other kind of clothes, Katy? 'Cause I don't know who'll do your washin' ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond

... up lumberingly and sauntered out through the kitchen into the long lean-to addition, that was used as a summer kitchen now, and the moment he opened the door there poured out a thick volume of black smoke and flying soot. The old-fashioned oil stove had a way of letting its wicks "work up," as Shad said, if left too long ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester

... ill, a dead child in the bed, a sick child in her arms; yes, she "was pining; there was no work to be had". "Why did she leave the dead child on the bed? because there was no other place to put it." The cottage consisted of one room and a "lean-to", and husband and wife, the child dead of fever and the younger child sickening with it, were all obliged to lie on the one bed. In another cottage I found four generations sleeping in one room, the great-grandfather and his wife, the grandmother (unmarried), ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant

... after visiting some of the country patrols. I had filled my pipe, but discovered that I had no matches. Presently I noticed, on the right-hand side of the road amidst the bracken, a very humble abode. As a matter of fact, it was just what was then known as a "lean-to," the preliminary stage of the farmhouses that were then being built by the settlers. These "lean-tos" were, in the first instance used for living purposes. Later on, when the front parts of the houses were built, they became ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon

... he perforce acquired keenness of eye, thorough acquaintance with woodcraft, and the power of standing the severest strains of fatigue, hardship and exposure. He lived out in the woods for many months with no food but meat, and no shelter whatever, unless he made a lean-to of brush or crawled ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

... there was a cloister attached to the monastery in its early days, but of this no trace remains. It is also probable that one was erected by Bishop Pudsey, though this also has entirely vanished, unless (as suggested by Canon Greenwell) some marks of a lean-to roof on the north and east walls may be traces of its presence. In the western alley of the cloister is the old treasury, rich in records, and the vestries for canons, king's scholars, and choristers. The alley opens ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Durham - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • J. E. Bygate

... gold and went home. He lived with his grandmother, old Kate Nolan (commonly known in the harbor as Mother Nolan) and with his young brother Cormick. The cottage was the largest in the harbor—a grand house altogether. It contained three rooms, a loft, and a lean-to extension occupied by a pig and a dozen fowls. The skipper found the old woman squatted in a low chair beside the stove in the main room. This room served as kitchen, dining-room, general reception, and ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts

... portmanteau and followed the landlady to a small room, if it deserved the appellation, which had been built after the cottage, and a door broken through the wall into it. Ceiling there was none, it had only lean-to rafters, with tiles over head. I took a seat on the only stool that was in the room, and leant my elbow on the table in no very pleasant humour, when I heard the girl say, "And why don't you let him go on to the castle? Sure ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat

... afterwards it served as a sort of waiting-room for the clients and retainers of the house; it was an open court, roofed in on all the four sides, but open to the sky in the centre. The simplest form was called the Tuscan atrium, where the roof was simply a lean-to sloping towards the centre, the rafters being supported on beams, two of which rested on the walls of the atrium, and had two other cross-beams trimmed into them. The centre opening was called the impluvium, and immediately ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith

... But when the little house stood, its square log room and dirt floor open to the sun, Dallas performed her part of the building, and thatched the hip-roof with coarse grass from a meadow. Next, the well was dug; and the barn built as a lean-to, for the Lancasters knew little, but had heard much, about the blizzards of the territory. Then, while the elder girl covered the slanting rafters over Ben and Betty's stall, the section-boss hauled a scanty stock ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates

... best of it was not easy. The three convicts, after compelling their prisoners to make the resting-place they occupied more weather-proof and warm, set them to make a lean-to for themselves, to which they were relegated, but without arms, Mike Bannock having on the first day they were at work taken possession of ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn

... his claim, he looked in vain for Virginia's face as he passed the cabin window. He hurried the ponies into the corral, and the wagon under the lean-to beside the stable, half conscious that something was missing inside. Then he hastened to the cabin, but Virginia was ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter

... women of all the peoples, except the Punans, the husking of the PADI is a principal feature of the day's work, and is performed in much the same fashion by all. The Kenyahs alone do their work out of doors beside the PADI barns, sometimes under rude lean-to shelters. ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... "droving", cattle from pasture to market or railhead.) pannikin: a metal mug. Pipeclay: or Eurunderee, Where Lawson spent much of his early life (including his three years of school... Poley: name for s hornless (or dehorned) cow. skillion(-room): A "lean-to", a room built up against the back of some other building, with separate roof. sliprails: portion of a fence where the rails are lossely fitted so that they may be removed from one side and animal let through. smoke-ho: a short break from, esp., heavy physical work, and those ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson

... more plant of the walls before we look for flowers elsewhere. Our next plant is not very common at Willow Farm; still I know where to look for it. Built against one side of the big barn in the foldyard is a little lean-to shed. Often there are calves in it; but just now we are more interested in something ...
— Wildflowers of the Farm • Arthur Owens Cooke

... into a natural bowl-like hollow, so shut in with high rocks and underbrush that it was, in effect, a retreat almost as good as a cave for concealment. And that it was so used, or had been at some time, was made evident by the presence of a rude hut, little more than a lean-to since one end was wholly open, which snuggled ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson

... the home. Jean was sent to stay and sleep with the woman, and as she had, on occasion, as caustic a tongue as "Ma," the man had not a very agreeable time. It was decided later to bring the woman and child to the hut, and there, beneath her verandah, they rigged up a little lean-to, where they were housed, Jean sleeping with them at night and keeping a watchful eye on the mother. "It is really," said "Ma," "far braver and kinder of her to live with that heathen woman with her fretting habits than it is for her to go out in the dark and fight with snakes. Jean has ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... cob-walled cottage, the front of which faced down a dozen precipitous steps upon the road leading from Lansulyan to the Porth. The cottage had but one window in the back, in the upper floor; and just beneath it jutted out a lean-to shed, on the wooden side of which I rapped thrice ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... of the house the piazza had not been built, a small lean-to extension taking its place. An apartment was thus formed which could be entered from without as well as from within the dwelling, and here Mr. Baron maintained what was at once a business office and a study. This extension was but one story high, with a roof which sloped ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe

... a 'lean-to' a group of men sat, hurriedly gulping their morning meal, finding time, all the same, for loud talk and noisy chaff. They were prosaic, hard-faced men, with lines drawn deeply beneath their eyes, and complexions sallow, despite the breezes of the hills among which they were reared. From ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather

... up to the party who had stopped to camp for the night. It was a clear warm evening. After they had hobbled the horses in a near meadow flat, Jack and his father made a lean-to for the women and children and roofed it with bark. Then they cut wood and built a fire and gathered boughs for bedding. Later, tea was made and beefsteaks and bacon grilled on spits of green birch, the dripping fat being caught on slices of toasting bread whereon the ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... were as good as their word and how, when Johnny returned, they stood aside and let Johnny and the sheriff fight it out. How the sheriff beat Johnny to the draw, but was wounded in the left arm while Johnny fired a second shot as he lay dying on the floor of the lean-to. How the sheriff's wound was dressed by the companions of the dead Johnny, and how he was safely dismissed with honor, as between brave men, and how afterwards he hunted those same men down ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand

... astonishment, I saw here and there proceeding a little smoke; and, on approaching it, I beheld a picture I shall not readily forget. The tenants had been all evicted, and yet, dreadful to say, they were there still! the children nestling, and the poor women huddling together, under a temporary lean-to of straw, which they had managed to stick into the interstices of the ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey

... the foot of a dense mountain forest, where the shadows lay thick and cold, and there seemed something sinister in the silence all about them. None the less, they soon had a good camp-fire going, and with the axe they proceeded to make a sort of lean-to shelter out of pine boughs. Rob picked out a place near a big fallen log, drove in two crotches a little higher than his head, and placed across them a long pole; then from the log to this ridge-pole they laid others, and thatched it all with pine boughs until they had quite a respectable ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough

... supper, therefore, Bilkins saw that the things we should want were stored in the small boat: food, ammunition, canvas for a lean-to, matches, utensils of sundry kinds—in fact, the necessaries. He had attended to my camping outfits before, and possessed a genius for knowing what to include. Only when this was under way, and the mate had thrice assured ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... there. He was fearful that to enter by the front door would be but to proclaim his presence, but at last he perceived that there was an entrance by a small door that was partly open above the roof of the little lean-to on the side of the barn. Carefully he climbed up on the roof and cautiously made his way to the door. He peered within but it was dark and at first he was unable to discern anything. He waited until his eyes became somewhat accustomed to the dim light and then saw that ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson

... the ravine wall, in a small cove was a log cabin with a lean-to shed, under which was sheltered the fatal red car which had lured ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor

... of a collection of tents and of lean-to shacks made of boughs and canvas, three or four log cabins, and a store, scattered along the side of the valley, amidst great trees. To the east showed the bluish gap, of which Mr. Grigsby had spoken, in the hills, and beyond ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin

... bell rang for supper they trooped across the road. The kitchen in reality consisted of a mess-room downstairs with a dormitory overhead; the actual kitchen was in a lean-to behind. When the six men had seated themselves at the long trestle covered with oilcloth, the cook entered with a steaming ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner

... on to the terrace. The girl was not there, but by the gate into the olive-yard, where there was a lean-to shed for tools, they found her sitting on a cask, whittling a piece of wood and talking to a curly-headed ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various

... of it, did you, Meg?" asked Bobby. "Look, this must have been the lean-to where Mrs. Harley did the washing. Yes, here's an old wooden tub all ...
— Four Little Blossoms on Apple Tree Island • Mabel C. Hawley

... large room or "bower" for the ladies; behind the hall a round tower, seemingly the strong place of the whole house; on the other side a kitchen; and stuck on to bower, kitchen, and every other principal building, lean-to after lean-to, the uses of which it is impossible now to discover. The house had grown with the wants of the family,—as many good old English houses have done to this day. Round it would be scattered barns and stables, in which grooms and herdsmen slept side by side ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... inner room, and he got up promptly to explore it. It proved to be cramped and dark, lighted only from the larger apartment, which in its turn had but the one high north window of the ordinary studio. The small room was little more than a shed or "lean-to", serving the purposes of kitchen and storeroom combined. The arrangements of the whole cabin showed that some one had built it with a view to passing in seclusion a few days at a time without forsaking ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King

... over the round logs and give a pull here and a pull there at long oars, and try to get the unwieldy length up and down stream; they wear only a waist cloth, and look so sun-bitten; there is but one tiny patch of shadow in the middle of their island under a lean-to cottage of matting, with a burgee on a tall bamboo flying over it. Our wash sends their dug-out canoe bobbling alongside their raft, and splashes over and between the logs, and the raftsmen have to bustle to keep their herd together, and we pass, and they go and dream, ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... good for thatching a lean-to when balsam-fir is not to be found, and its bark can be used ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard

... in the orchard one day, I saw firmly fastened, a long, pouch-like nest, woven with rare skill. Securely fastened to the nest by various colored pieces of twine and thread was one of smaller size, like a lean-to added to a house, as if the original nest had been found too small to accommodate the family of young birds when hatched. The oriole possesses a peculiar, sweet, high-whistled trill, similar to this—'La-la-la-la,' which always ends with the ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas

... log cabin with an additional "lean-to" of the same material, roofed with bark, and on the other side a larger and more ambitious "extension" built of rough, unplaned, and unpainted redwood boards, lightly shingled. The "lean-to" was evidently used as a kitchen, ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... understanding of the plans, the Professor outlined his views: "We have been putting up our structures here in the way usually followed in all rural communities, where there is plenty of room, by first erecting a little shanty, and then adding another room to that, and a little lean-to on the other side, and as the family grows, enclosing the lean-to to make another room, and then adding to that, and so on, until the whole mass makes a more or less picturesque structure, and a fine thing for artists to rave over. But the interior comfort is ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay

... a lean-to kitchen at the back of the house were looming dead ahead of him when from the corner of the cottage sprang a small terrier. It made for Mr. Trimm, barking shrilly. He retreated backward, kicking at the little dog and, to hold his balance, striking out with ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... more than sufficient for our supper, but Boxer had no objection to eat the remainder. I was very glad my faithful dog had come, as he assisted to keep watch, and was not likely to allow any foe to approach the camp without giving us warning. Having built a lean-to, we arranged our beds, composed of twigs and leaves, of which there were abundance on the ground, and with our saddles for pillows and our feet to the fire, we rolled ourselves up in our blankets, feeling as comfortable as any people could do on feather beds. I, however, had not been long sleeping, ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston

... pointed stick on the floor of one of these half caves and unearth, as I have done, numerous potsherds, mussel shells, bone awls, flint arrow-heads, split bones of large game animals, and the burnt wood of centuries of camp-fires which tell the tale of the first lean-to shelter used ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard

... the space between the rock and the bole of the oak with moss and stones, and then by building a heavy lean-to roof of leafy branches, thatched with lashed bundles of marsh-grass, they constructed in two days a fairly comfortable shack, hard by an abundant, never-failing supply of the finest water ever ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... beating deer into a fenced runway that converged to a narrow opening where two warriors stood ready, armed with great spears. He turned to the left, crossing a little burnt clearing which still bore the stubble of the season's harvest. Another half-mile and he suddenly came upon a grass lean-to behind which two old Hillmen grimly stirred a simmering pot from which arose an overpowering stench: he fled the spot, knowing the sinister character of ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson

... a miserable lean-to shack at one side of the clearing, and for a while the motley crew loitered about bandying coarse jests at the expense of the "king." The boy, Rudolph, brought food and water, he alone of them all evincing the slightest respect or awe for the ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... an agreeable distraction to Maggie's grief, and her tears gradually subsided as she trotted along by Luke's side to his pleasant cottage, which stood with its apple and pear trees, and with the added dignity of a lean-to pigsty, at the other end of the Mill fields. Mrs. Moggs, Luke's wife, was a decidely agreeable acquaintance. She exhibited her hospitality in bread and treacle, and possessed various works of art. Maggie actually forgot that she had any special cause of sadness ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... two new window-frames, beaverboard for inside lining, and two gallons of paint. I have also demanded a lean-to, to serve as an extra bedroom and nursery, and a brand-new bunk-house for the hired "hands" when they happen to come along. I have also insisted on a covered veranda and sleeping porch on the south side of the shack, and fly-screens, and repairs to ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer

... walls were consequently heightened or altogether rebuilt. The acutely pointed roof of the nave could no longer be continued downwards to cover these higher aisles. The aisle was consequently covered with a lean-to roof, or with a separate gabled roof of its own. A free increase in width was thus possible. The church of Appleton-le-Street in Yorkshire has a short nave with north and south aisles. The north aisle, added in the early part of the thirteenth century, ...
— The Ground Plan of the English Parish Church • A. Hamilton Thompson

... "Oh, no. Just a lean-to which serves as a shelter, if people want to spend the night and be on hand for early morning fishing. Sometimes, too, I have gone over in the late afternoon and fished until dark, afterward turning in on the pine boughs for the night. It ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett

... watch the developing process. Hugh's dark- room was a roomy lean-to shed, built by himself and well equipped with shelves, sink, and taps. It would hold six people at ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton

... horseback and brought back the shack that was to be home for many years. Eighteen miles off a man had some extra hand-cut shingles which he was willing to trade for a horse-collar. While Mrs. Wade took the long drive Martin, under his father's guidance, chopped down enough trees to build a little lean-to kitchen and make-shift stable. Sixteen miles south another neighbor had some potatoes to exchange for a hatching of chickens. Martin rode over with the hen and her downy brood. The long rides, consuming hours, were trying, for Martin was needed every moment on a farm where everything ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius

... He could not help observing what a nondescript lot of chickens they were —not a purebred among them; besides, he noticed many were old, and some had frozen feet and combs. No wonder, he thought, as he glanced at the poorly built hen house that faced the east instead of south—a lean-to built against the side of the barn, with only one small window, and that one on the north end, while the cracks between the upright boards, of which the coop was constructed, were not ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson

... seemed a lean-to banked against the cliff-wall, a slanting shed-wall of glassite fifty feet high and two hundred in length. Under it, for months Grantline's borers had dug into the cliff. Braced tunnels were here, penetrating back and downward into this vein ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various

... it before?" he asked in surprise. "Dryin' a gun with hot water 's safest way to keep her from rustin'; carries out all th' old water hangin' round her insides 'n' makes her so damned hot Mr. Rust don't even have time to throw up a lean-to 'n' get to eatin' of her 'fore the new water's all gone; 'n' Mr. Rust can't get to eat none 'thout water, no more'n a deer can stay out of a salt lick, or Erne Moore can keep away from the habitaw gals, or Tit Moody can get his own consent to stop his tongue waggin' off tales ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson

... show...."[20] The following description, by the grandson of one of the original settlers, illustrates the cooperative nature of the enterprise, in addition to giving a clear picture of the type of construction which replaced the early lean-to shelter with which the frontiersman was ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf

... story. In the centre of the group was the hall, with doors opening into the court. On one side stood the kitchen; on the other the chapel when the thane became a Christian and required the services of the Church for himself and his household. Numerous other rooms with lean-to roofs were joined on to the hall, and a tower for purposes of defence in case of an attack. Stables and barns were scattered about outside the house, and with the cattle and horses lived the grooms and herdsmen, while ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield

... nothing. It was while he paused there indecisively that a sight met his eye which spurred hesitancy to immediate action. Around the bend far up the stream came sweeping a tangle of wreckage—trees, and brush, and floating timber—and swirling along in its wake was a small lean-to which he recognized as one that had stood on the bank of the river at Melton, the village located five miles above Freeman's Falls. If the water were high enough to carry away this building, it must indeed have risen ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett

... illuminated by a red and angry light. Almost at the moment of our entrance, a tower of flame arose in front of the window, and, with a tingling report, a pane fell inward on the carpet. They had set fire to the lean-to outhouse, where Northmour used to nurse ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various

... hut and the fence, on the back side, was a lean-to that joined the hut at the eaves, and was made out of plank. It was as long as the hut, but narrow—only about six foot wide. The door to it was at the south end, and was padlocked. Tom he went to the soap-kettle and searched around, and fetched back the iron thing they lift ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... the trigger. The cow jumped and kicked over the milk-pail. Old Annersley came running. But Young Pete, the lust of the chase spurring him on, had disappeared around the corner of the cabin after the hen. He routed her out from behind the haystack, herded her swiftly across the clearing to the lean-to stable, and corralled her, so to speak, in a manger. Just as Annersley caught up with him, Pete leveled and fired—at close range. What was left of the hen—which was chiefly feathers, he gathered up and held by the remaining leg. "I got ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... He was gathering a handful of sticks from the back of their lean-to, where the protection of their own bodies had kept that kindling dry. Shann snapped a length between his hands, dropped it into ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton

... worked out at 145 cubic feet as against 900 feet prescribed by English prison regulations. Ventilation was afforded on the one side by square holes cut in the corrugated iron walls of the shed,{35} and on the other (the buildings being lean-to's against the permanent prison buildings) by grated windows opening into the native cells. Needless to say, these grated windows were originally intended to afford ventilation to the native cells, but the buildings to accommodate the Reformers had been ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... died. The pigsty, a miserable lean-to run up of planks and thatched with branches, gave no protection against wind and weather. No one heard the helpless old man entreating for mercy in a voice trembling with despair. No one saw him creep to the closed door and raise himself ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... hearth, with decorated mantle, which must have been that of the dining-room; at present the room is used for lumber. Half of it has been pulled down to build a staircase, and the low casement windows are blocked by a lean-to coalshed, making the room so dark that I could barely see the plaster modelling ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland

... from his cheek, turned, and fled. He went to the rough lean-to that served as a stable and began to ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain

... of another type, in which a wealthy sheep-owner's son, married to a very pretty native woman, leads for some months in the year from choice, a life so rough, that most people would think it a hardship to lead it from necessity. There are two apartments, a loft and a "lean-to." The hospitable owners gave me their sleeping-room, which was divided from the "living-room" by a canvass partition. This last has a rude stone chimney split by an earthquake, holding fire enough to roast an ox. Round it the floor is paved with great rough stones. A fire of ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... great fire of St. Roch's (1845) the Fuel Yard, about four acres in extent, with some hundreds of cords of wood piled there, and a very large quantity of coals in a 'lean-to-shed' against the Palais walls were consumed—the coals continued to burn and smoulder for nearly six months,—and notwithstanding the solidity of the masonry, as already described, portions of it, with the heat like ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... long ago said. Among the obligations of wealth is the obligation of display. People of small means do not allow for the expansion of mind that goes along with the accumulation of property. It was only natural that Margaret, who might have been contented with two rooms and a lean-to as the wife of a country clergyman, should have felt cramped in her old house, which once seemed a world too large for the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... took Sylvia to the guest-room, which was no more than a corrugated iron lean-to lined with boarding, she unexpectedly drew the girl to her and kissed her. But still she did not say ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell

... stood at the kitchen table kneading dough. The room was called the kitchen, which it was not, except in winter. The stove was moved out in spring to a lean-to, easily reached through the open door leading ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr

... sitting on a square piece of furniture which the Marquis of Glome called an "Aberdeen lean-to." She now spread herself out upon it in the easy attitude of one who is about to converse intimately for ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens

... A "lean-to" of brush was soon erected, and in one corner the boy made a bed of fir boughs, upon which he placed the sufferer, who, after the first attempt, made no ...
— Neal, the Miller - A Son of Liberty • James Otis

... found a huge rock that shelved inward, like a lean-to, and he crept back under this with Muskwa before the deluge descended. For many minutes it was more like a flood than a rain. It seemed as though a part of the Pacific Ocean had been scooped up and dropped on them, and in half an hour the creek ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood

... might be some kind of shelter under those fallen cedars," said Randy. "Hanging down from the top of the cliff, they form a sort of lean-to." ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)

... the building, in a lean-to, there is a double-chamber rattler for the testing of paving brick according to the specifications of the National ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson

... better for knowing amid what sort of scenes it was unfolded. Moreover, such a place is one of the pleasant things in the world to look at, as I judge. This was a small house, with its gable end to the road, and a lean-to at the back, over which the long roof sloped down picturesquely. It was weather-painted; that was all; of a soft dark grey now, that harmonized well enough with the gayer colours of meadows and trees. And two superb elms, of New England's own, stood beside it and hung over it, enfolding and sheltering ...
— Diana • Susan Warner

... the camissal foamed all white with bloom and the welter of yellow violets ran in the grass under it like fire, Greenhow built a lean-to to his house and made the discovery that the oak which jutted out from the barranca behind it was of just the right height from the ground to make a swing for a child, which caused him a strange ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... cellar, vault, hold, cockpit; cubbyhole; cook house; entre-sol; mezzanine floor; ground floor, rez-de-chaussee; basement, kitchen, pantry, bawarchi-khana, scullery, offices; storeroom &c (depository) 636; lumber room; dairy, laundry. coach house; garage; hangar; outhouse; penthouse; lean-to. portico, porch, stoop, stope, veranda, patio, lanai, terrace, deck; lobby, court, courtyard, hall, vestibule, corridor, passage, breezeway; ante room, ante chamber; lounge; piazza, veranda. conservatory, greenhouse, bower, arbor, summerhouse, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... daughter began preparing supper on a little wood stove in the lean-to back of the house. Swiftly and silently, with Ben's assistance, she made coffee, scrambled eggs ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes

... the open doorway into the house. At a curt nod from Gowan, Ashton followed him around to the far side of the house, leaving Knowles in the act of hastily reloading his pipe. Under a lean-to that covered a door in the side of the house was a barrel of water and a bench with two basins. On a row of pegs above hung a number of towels, all ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet

... these preparations consumed time. It was nearly the end of August when these plans had been worked out and with the setting up of the Gitchie Manitou in its novel aerodrome and the storing away of its oil and gasoline in a little bark lean-to, the camp appeared to ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler

... Man-in-the-Iron-Mask character. He gave me no warning, scorning the normal procedure of induction by a messenger. He would appear of a sudden peeping in at the door to see if I was at home, would then thrust the door to and lock it on the inside with a deft turn of the wrist, would screw up the lean-to ventilator above the door in frantic haste, and would have darted over and be sitting down beside me, talking earnestly and ventre-a-terre of matters of grave moment, almost before I could rise to my feet and conform to those deferential observances that are customary ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... leave my sister—she as is t' widow-woman, wheere a put up when a'm at home. Things is main an' dear; four-pound loaves is at sixteenpence; an' there's a deal o' talk on a famine i' t' land; an' whaten a paid for my victual an' t' bed i' t' lean-to helped t' oud woman a bit,—an' she's sadly down i' t' mouth, for she cannot hear on a lodger for t' tak' my place, for a' she's moved o'er to t' other side o' t' bridge for t' be nearer t' new buildings, ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell



Words linked to "Lean-to" :   shelter



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